


diamonds

by rainingover



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe, Angst, Complicated Relationships, Destructive Behaviour, Drug Use, Friendship/Love, Hangover, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, M/M, Melancholy, Mental Health Issues, Partying, Pining, Possibly Unrequited Love, References to Drugs, Sad Party Boys, Self-Esteem Issues, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-03
Updated: 2019-09-08
Packaged: 2019-10-21 07:12:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 28,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17638184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainingover/pseuds/rainingover
Summary: Ten’s body is a temple, and Kun worships every inch of it, not that Ten knows this. He prays in secret, in moments like these, watching Ten glide over concrete slabs and shining under the street-lamp like a thousand diamonds in the shape of a man, and then he closes his eyes and feels the cool air against his face, and pretends he’s not in love.(or, Ten loves to party and Kun loves him.)





	1. chapter one: marmalade skies.

**Author's Note:**

> please let me know if i have missed any tags. <3  
> (chapter titles lyrics of lucy in the sky with diamonds - the beatles)

Kun sits alone on the steps and smokes, and Ten dances across the carpark with his eyes closed. It’s almost freezing out, but Ten doesn’t seem to feel the cold at all. All he feels is the music, except the music is only playing in his head.

His breath comes out in plumes of snowy white. They look almost identical to the clouds of smoke that leave Kun’s lips as he exhales, except they’re not. Kun watches Ten dance through the haze of the smoke-filled air in front of his face, like he's watching an old movie, crackled and charming. It’s mesmerising.

Ten is smooth lines and silken movements. It’s hypnotising, and confusing, and it’s weirdly intimate, Kun thinks. It’s like he’s watching him fuck, rather than dance across an empty car park, high on god-knows-what, a block away from the party they've just left.

Kun’s fingers are cold, but inside he feels like he might be made of warm treacle instead of blood and bones. The weed is good, it’s just what he needed tonight, and he makes a mental note to remember to thank Jaehyun for suggesting it over his usual batch, even if Ten does turn his nose up every time Kun rolls a blunt up in front of him.

Tonight, Ten had reached in the exact same way as usual when he'd spotted Kun and Jaehyun with their stash and pulled a face, dramatic and petulant and still beautiful.

(“You know the smell reminds me of bad kissers from high-school,” he says. “Don’t you love yourself, don’t you love your lungs?”

Kun eyes the bottle of tequila that Ten is holding. “Don’t you love your liver?”

Ten simply sticks out his tongue at him and turns on his heels, pushing his way through the crowd and towards the makeshift dance-floor someone has set up dangerously close to a set of french doors that open onto a third floor balconette. Kun doesn’t know whose place this is, but that isn’t important, it never is. A party is made by the people, not the location, Ten always tells him. That and the quality of the pills on offer. Kun tries not to dwell for too long on the latter, because if he does panic rises and he imagines emergency rooms and thinks about the fragility of tiny dancers with little regard for risk assessment.

Jaehyun is here with pot, and Ten is here grinding on guys he hardly knows, and Kun can’t stop staring even though watching Ten with other guys feels a little like having a knife lodged right between his ribs. It’s Saturday night, and it’s a party, until it doesn’t feel like a party anymore and Ten is pouting and complaining that, “People aren’t fun around here." He has his fingers curled around Kun’s wrist like a handcuff, except it’s a handcuff that Kun would never remove if he had the choice. Kun knows that once Ten has decided to leave, he is resolute about it, so then he’s dragging Kun through the hallway and out of the front door and telling him they’ll “Have to make their own fun, just the two of them.”)

So that’s how the scene in front of Kun unfolds: A cold night hosting their own private after party, and Ten dancing to music that doesn’t exist, his liver pickled and his neck blooming a hickey that stands out bright against his skin. Kun makes the blunt he’s smoking last for as long as he can, smoking it until it’s a short stub of a thing he can barely hold between his thumb and finger. Then he pulls his jacket sleeves down as far as he can over his hands and wraps his arms around his knees, and he watches Ten sway under a half-moon and wonders what it would feel like to give Ten a hickey of his own.

Not that he’d want to mark Ten up or anything, he isn’t a territorial type of person, and he’s always scoffed at possessive couples. He’s always turned his nose up at guys who feel a need to call someone theirs, as if owning another person is an indication of love. Kun doesn’t need to own anyone, which is ironic, really, considering he would give _everything_ of himself to Ten in a heartbeat, no doubts about it, if Ten wanted him to. He already has, or so it feels. Ten just doesn’t know it.

Anyway, it doesn’t matter because Ten doesn’t _want_ Kun to give anything to him.

Ten just wants to dance alone in a carpark, in a loose white vest and skinny jeans that are ripped at the knees and at the calves _and_ at the thighs, high enough so that people’s eyes linger there when they see him.

He wears those jeans a lot, says they’re his favourites, and he allows boys that he likes to put their hands on the skin they show off while they ride in the back seats of cabs or the middle of bars. He lets Jaehyun and his other friends do it sometimes, and he doesn't care who is watching, and then he bats off the wandering hands and laughs, and says, “Be careful, little boy, this body is a temple.”

It’s meant to be a joke, Kun guesses, but Ten’s body _is_ a temple, and Kun worships every inch of it, not that Ten knows this. He prays in secret, in moments like these, watching Ten glide over concrete slabs and shining under the street-lamp like a thousand diamonds in the shape of a man, and then he closes his eyes and feels the cool air against his face, and pretends he’s not in love.

 

 

 

 

 

It shouldn't be a surprise that Kun met Ten at a party.

That’s how everyone meets in their circle. People in this city aren’t born, not in the way most people are, Kun has come to realise. Instead they just appear like a flash in a haze of alcohol, smoke and a deafening bass, and then they’re a part of the scene, and the scenery, and it’s just accepted that they belong there. Lucas described it to him like this once, complete with somewhat dramatic hand movements. "Taeyong BOOM, Ten, BOOM," he'd said. He was drunk, but Kun has always thought that Lucas had a valid point - in a way, this is how everyone seems to burst into their lives, now. 

Kun knew Taeyong, and by extension his group of friends and stragglers through his cousin Sicheng, who he'd known was apparently something of an enigma on the city's party scene.

No one - they claimed - could ever tell which parties Sicheng was going to show at, even though he was always invited. “If he comes to your party, you know you’re cool,” someone had said not long after Kun moved to town, but when he’d quizzed Sicheng on how he chose what to attend, Sicheng had just shrugged and said, “I just go out if there’s nothing I wanna watch on TV.”

Kun had never had the heart to tell his new friends that Sicheng was not the barometer of what was cool, but instead was just ruled by anime and cooking shows, and, as far as he knows, no one has ever figured it for themselves yet, so more fool them.

So, Kun was only at the party because of Sicheng, and he only met Ten because Taeyong pointed him out, a finger pointed across the room as they sat there - four of them squashed up together onto an old leather couch, as Jaehyun dropped ash from their cigarettes onto a weird old-money futon next to them. Kun watched the room spin around and around like the LP playing on the Sony vintage record player in the corner of the room, confused as to why he was here and why it felt so _cosy_ , like he was a part of it all now.

“Fucking hipsters!” Yuta had scoffed. Thinking back, Kun find this kind of funny because he's always thought Yuta was exactly that himself, with his skinny jeans and his sleeve tattoos and his penchant for avocados. “Why can’t we just listen to a fucking Spotify playlist like normal people so _I_ can choose the tracks? I have better taste in music than anyone in here.”

Sicheng had raised a disbelieving eyebrow, and Taeyong had ignored Yuta’s rant completely and had pointed to Ten and introduced him as his “direct competition,” though his competition in what, exactly, he never bothered to say. Kun didn’t know what to make of this, because Taeyong usually spoke in riddles, and they were all drunk, which made the riddles even more difficult to unpick.

(“He fucks all the guys that Taeyong wants to fuck,” Jaehyun had explained to him at a later date and Kun had wondered, then, if that included Jaehyun himself. "But they're close, really. We all are, we look out for each other.")

Taeyong had described Ten as his biggest competition, and Ten had waved back at them as Taeyong stared, and then he had shimmied his way across the room, cup in hand. He’d perched on the edge of the couch, looking down at Kun with a piercing gaze and a perfect face, and had said, oh-so sincerely, “I have decided that I’m in love.”

Yuta had laughed, then, leaning over Taeyong to ask, “With who?” He hadn't seem surprised by this confession. Maybe Ten loves a lot of people, Kun had thought.

“Not with a _person_. With the pills that Wendy brought. I feel so good, they’re something else.” Ten had sighed then, dreamy-eyed and soft smiled. Not people, then. He'd grinned like a fox at Taeyong, who was flipping him off for seemingly no reason, and then he had leant down closer to Kun’s face, his breath hot, his eyes like glitter, mesmerising. “Move up,” he’d demanded, and then he’d slid off the arm of the couch and practically into Kun’s lap. 

Kun struggled to move up - since there were already four of them on the three-seater couch - but he’d shifted as much as he could do to allow Ten to squeeze into place on seat with them, and Ten had placed his hand on Kun’s leg, and had rested his head on Kun’s shoulder like it belonged right there.

“I don’t know who you are,” he’d murmured after a while, “But I feel like I could trust you with my whole, entire, life.”

And that was it, Kun was instantly a goner. He fell in love with Ten right there and then, at a party that Ten barely remembers because the pills that Wendy passed round really _were_ something else. Ten had raved about them for weeks.

Ten had fallen asleep with his head on Kun’s shoulder, and his body curled into Kun’s side, and Kun had fallen asleep there too, after a while.  When he’d woken up hours later, body stiff and mouth dry, Ten wasn’t there anymore.

Sometimes Kun wishes he’d stayed in and watched television himself that night, because he thinks that maybe everything wouldn’t hurt so much now. Other times, though, he is amazed by the hand that fate has dealt him- the one that means Ten is in his life and he is eternally grateful that that season's Masterchef final had been on the week before, so he and Sicheng had no reason to have stayed in.

 

 

 

 

 

Once the imaginary band in Ten’s head stop playing and he declares that it's time to sleep, they take the shortcut back to Kun’s place, under the grimy underpass that Ten makes them run through, just in case something bad might happen. He shrieks and pulls Kun through the tunnel, and his laughter echoes through it with them like a soundtrack to their night.

“You shouldn’t have left your sweater behind,” Kun says as they walk. Ten’s skin is scattered with tiny goosebumps. “You’ll freeze. Borrow my jacket.”

Ten is still holding his hand. “No,” he says,  “because then _you’ll_ freeze, and you’re more important than I am.”

I’m not, Kun thinks. “I’m not,” he says. Ten just smiles.

They stop at the twenty-four hour convenience store the block behind Kun’s place for bottled water and microwaveable pizzas, that look like congealed goo when they take them out of the wrappers back at Kun’s.

Ten scrunches his nose up in distaste, but he eats it when it comes out of the microwave, piping hot and smelling like burnt plastic.

Kun smiles at the sight. It feels good to watch Ten consuming something that isn't designed to fuck with your brain. “Did you have a good night tonight?”

Ten nods. “So much fun.” He presses at the bruise on his neck with his delicate fingers, and Kun swallows the pang of jealousy that bubbles its way up to the surface quickly.

“Drink your water before we sleep,” he says, loosening the lid of one of the bottles and pressing it into Ten’s waiting hand. “All of it, please.”

“You’re the best.” Ten stretches up to press a kiss to his cheek. It lands somewhere near his jawline, and it feels like being burnt with the end of a cigarette. He doesn’t dare touch it, in case the pain spreads. “You always take care of me.”

“Of course,” Kun replies. That’s all there really is to say on the matter.

Ten rests his cheek on Kun’s chest and stands very still. Kun’s T-shirt is only thin and he swears he can still feel Ten’s warmth direct against his skin. After a while, he pulls away and looks at Kun with a strange expression that could be fondness. “Thanks for letting me stay tonight,” he says, as if it’s a one off occasion or a special favour.

It isn’t a one off, though. Ever since Ten fell asleep on his shoulder ten months prior, he has stayed at Kun’s apartment most weekends. Their weekends are always variations of the same, and they go something like this:

It begins on a Friday, after work, when Ten gets wind of a club night or a lock in, or someone throwing a get-together in an identikit apartment in a newly gentrified part of the city. Friday bleeds into Saturday all too quickly, and once black coffee with fresh eggs and home fries, cooked by Kun, have been devoured, Ten naps the rest of the day away on Kun’s sofa, until one of his thousand friends who he barely knows texts them another location, and away they go into the night.

Kun drinks slowly, carefully, refusing to let go of himself. He smokes, sometimes, when Jaehyun is around, and he keeps Ten in his peripheral vision so he doesn’t get lost and fall into the abyss he always seems to be on the precipice of. Ten flirts his way through the weekend with glittering eyes and pink pills on his tongue, and he’s happy, so happy, until he admits that he isn’t having fun anymore, and then they go home, back to Kun’s, where they fall asleep together. Ten refuses to leave Kun’s place until the sun is going down again, putting the weekend to bed, and then he leaves because he has to, because Kun works nine to seven in the week, and he moans that he already misses him, even if Kun doesn't believe that he does..

Kun always lets Ten stay over and he always will do, no matter what.

It’s partially because Kun’s place is closer to the centre of the city, but mainly because he would never settle not knowing if Ten was alright if he’s been on something. Ten, who free-falls into new experiences as though he’s trying to prove something to an unnamed god. Ten, who makes new friends, who he barely knows, and takes whatever they offer him. Most recently, Ten talks non-stop about a duo called Xiaojun and Hendery, who he calls "beautiful gay babies, like I used to be," and who Kun wants to put straight into a cab and send home when he meets them himself because they are so young and so stupid. Ten, who takes unidentifiable pills, and closes his eyes and allows himself to be pulled into the sea by the tide.

At the end of the night he always seeks Kun out and gives him the most beautiful smile Kun has ever seen in his entire life, each more beautiful than the last, and Kun can't find it in his bones to say no to him, not ever. Ten wouldn't listen if he did. 

Ten goes out most nights in the week, too. It just goes with the job, he claims. He’s in events promotions, and promotions seems to mean knowing a lot of people and being intoxicated, or that’s how it seems to Kun. “Aren’t you tired?” He asked Ten once, not long after they’d first met. They were outside the back of a bar, Ten stealing a smoke off one of the bartenders he'd befriended. “I've never met anyone like you. You’re out every night.”

“What's the alternative?” Ten had replied, and had looked at him as though he had three heads; as though the thought had never crossed his mind. As though he was solely designed to spend his nights with flashing lights and heavy beats and people who may or may not remember him in the morning. “Staying in?”

Kun had taken a breath. “Ten,” he’d started, “don’t you _ever_ enjoy your own company?”

“No, of course I don’t.” Ten had laughed, incredulous, as if this was a joke. As if it was obvious. It didn’t feel funny to Kun, it felt like sadness. “And anyway, if I stay in, there’s no one to tell me I’m pretty.”

Then he’d slipped back inside the bar and met up with Wendy and her supply of colourful pills.

 


	2. chapter two:   you answer quite slowly

Ten turns up at Kun’s house on a Saturday in skinny leather pants and a t-shirt that’s tied into a knot at the waist. It’s too cold out for his outfit, but the weather has never determined Ten’s fashion sense, he wouldn't allow it to. He looks skinny, but Kun doesn’t tell him so because he knows that Ten would take it as a compliment, and he'd laugh it off, like he laughs off all concern.

They walk over to the subway station, Ten linking arms with Kun and looking down at their feet as they walk in time. Ten’s boots are studded and Kun thinks his feet look like tiny weapons. Ten is a tiny weapon himself. He tells Ten this, because it’s kind of funny, and Ten laughs in a way that makes Kun feel warm. "I'm sharp and shiny, just like a knife," he says, and then, "I'm sorry if I hurt you." Kun says nothing in reply.

As they wait for the train downtown, Ten tells him about some clubnight launch party he went to with Jaehyun and Taeyong earlier in the week, and Kun listens and tries to nod in the right places.

“I had a headache until, like, yesterday. I had to wear sunglasses to work on Wednesday night,” Ten says. “Though it turned out quite well because I looked bomb and I gave my business card out to  _ everyone _ !” 

“What had you taken?” Kun frowns. “A three day headache sounds… Dangerous. Very dangerous.”

“I don’t know what. You think too much.” Ten tells him as they stand on the platform, which is empty aside from a mother with a stroller, who is talking loudly on the phone. “You forget to live in the moment.”

“I _do_ live in the moment.” Kun is a little offended. Truthfully, he knows he isn't half as reckless as some of their friends, and he bats off grandpa jokes from Lucas and Sicheng with ease because he knows they're just playing with him, but sometimes Ten’s words are prickly, just like he warned, and they make him feel like he isn't quite living up to expectations he had never realised were set. He watches carefully as Ten wanders closer to the edge of the platform, absentminded, playful. “I’m just… I  guess that I worry, sometimes. I’m allowed to worry. Can you step away from the edge now?” 

Ten looks at him with a teasing smile, tongue pushed between his teeth, daring Kun to beg. 

“Come on, stop playing around.” Kun winces. “ _ Please _ , Ten?”

Ten shoves his hands into his pockets and laughs, choral and joyous in its sound. Sometimes Kun wonders if Ten genuinely knows how much Kun really cares about him, or whether he thinks Kun is putting on a show. He does move though, safely back to Kun’s side, where Kun can feel his warmth.

“I told Taeyong we’d drop by Understated after the party,” he says as he stands at Kun’s rest, rocking back and forth on his heels. He’s restless, always. His nose is pink from the cold and Kun instinctively puts an arm around his shoulder. “I hope that's okay with you.”

Kun frowns, trying to remember which of the dozens of clubs in this city Understated is meant to be.  “Isn’t that… Oh, isn’t the entrance fee to that place stupidly expensive?”

“Yes but we’re on the guestlist, silly.” Ten pulls out of his embrace and pokes him in the side. He laughs when Kun he squirms away. “I know the PR guy there, so he’s getting us in. You know he  _ always _ gets us in on the guest list for free.”

“I’ve only been there once,” Kun points out. “And I remember paying an extortionate fee.”

Ten rolls his eyes. “He gets  _ me _ in on the guestlist, then.” 

Probably in return for Ten getting him  off , Kun thinks, and then he feels dumb, and jealous, and mean. He isn't judgemental, he really, really isn’t. It's just-- well, the thought of Ten with other people gives him a weird kind of headache that is clearly psychosomatic. He feels like an idiot for it. 

He says, “I’ve been thinking… Maybe one Saturday we could just stay in and watch television,” and then he holds his breath and waits for Ten’s response.

Ten stops smiling, and shakes his head so softly that he almost doesn’t shake it at all.

“Oh baby, no.” Ten reaches out and pushes a stray hair back into place on Kun’s forehead. It whips up in the wind again regardless. He sighs. “I don’t stay in. I  _ can’t _ .”

Kun looks him in the eyes. “I would tell you that you look pretty. I promise,” he says. He doesn't expect Ten to get the reference; he won't remember that conversation outside the bar all those months back. Kun remembers it, though. Always. 

Ten just gives him a confused look, and then the train pulls up and they step inside the carriage, and Kun lets Ten draw circles on the back of his hand for the whole journey. He listens to Ten hum along to the music a group of kids are playing out of cellphone speakers at the other end of the carriage and he stares at his reflection in the window as the night gets darker and darker as it flashes past them outside of the train. 

The train gets busier at each stop; throngs of people on their way into the city get on at each station, and they’re all crackling with the same sort of excitement and energy that Ten is at the start of a big night out. It can be thrilling, that sort of anticipation, and Kun enjoys a drink and a smoke and seeing his friends as much as the next guy, but tonight his heart feels heavy. He thinks about Ten’s grief stricken face a the thought of something as mundane as Saturday night TV, and the resolute way with which he’d refused to even entertain the thought of living for anything but the party. 

He thinks about how little time Ten spends awake by himself, and about why that could be, and then about why it hurts so much to think about. And then he hums along the music with Ten, who grins at him and nestles into his side and says, “I promise you that tonight will be fun.”

 

 

 

 

It isn’t fun, though. Maybe it’s never fun, not really.

The party turns out to be a dud. Kun doesn’t know anyone there and even Ten only seems to have a few words to say to a few familiar faces. Still, it’s a chill vibe and Kun wouldn’t mind staying - there is free alcohol and someone’s playing an old Andy Warhol documentary on a projector against the back wall of the loft, so at least there is something to do other than wonder about what Ten is up to in the other room. The music playing is coming from a MacBook and Kun thinks about texting Yuta to let him know there isn't a record player in sight, but then he remembers that Yuta and Taeyong will already be at the club they want Ten to head to, so he doesn’t bother. Ten pulls a face when Kun mentions hanging around for a while longer and says that it’s too boring and not worth their while, and he acts antsy until Kun agrees they can move on. 

Kun does vaguely remember his last visit to Understated when they arrive and are ushered through the door at the front of a long line of pissed off looking people. It really is no different to the other clubs in this part of the city: overpriced, underlit, overpopulated and, most of all, absolutely, unashamedly, pretentious. Ironically, Kun thinks, there is literally nothing understated about the leather booths and industrial-chic decor, or about the patrons who frequent it, who are all desperate for their turn under the disco lights.

He follows Ten inside and receives air kisses from Seulgi, who he’s never really liked for no reason other than the fact he knows it was she who introduced Ten to Wendy and her pills back before he knew him. He knows this is petty and he guesses they’d probably get on well if he could get over himself, but he can’t quite bring himself to. He buys expensive vodka because he doesn’t have much choice, or at least he doesn’t feel like he does, and, anyway, sometimes the burn at the back of his throat is a good distraction from the ache in his chest. 

He watches Ten’s eyes gloss over like they’re made of a million tiny stars, and when Ten goes into the bathroom and doesn’t come out for what feels like hours, Kun can only guess he’s either taking something or taking someone, so Kun lets Jaehyun’s cute friend Jungwoo fawn over him in the meantime, with one eye on the bathroom door, and sips his vodka tonic until Ten re-appears, alive and well, and smiling, and then he can relax some more.

Ten climbs over Jungwoo in the booth, ignoring his yelps, and squeezes in between him and Kun as though they were saving that exact space for him all along. He curls his fingers around Kun’s’ bare arm as he rests it on the table, and grins at him with glassy eyes, and says, “Isn’t tonight the best?”

Ten’s smile is infectious, and Kun’s stupidly in love with him, so he smiles back at him. “You’re having fun?” He asks.  Jungwoo slips out of the booth and disappears into the crowd on the dance floor and Kun feels a little guilty for ignoring him all of a sudden, but he does nothing about it.

Ten nods. “I think so,” he says. “Wendy’s friend gave me something and I feel a bit… Weird.”

Kun narrows his eyes. “Weird... Weird how?”

“Oh, you know, just a bit hot and– and uneasy, I guess. But that’s normal!” He squeezes Kun’s forearm. “Stop worrying. Once it kicks in it’ll be  _ amazing _ .”

“Okay,” Kun replies, but he doesn’t know what else to say. He never does, never has done. He doesn’t even know how he ended up in this fucked up world of dreamers and lost boys and girls. Ten describes himself as a dreamer sometimes, says that he and Kun belong to something more exciting, more lucid than where they currently belong. That’s why, he says, he can’t stand the quiet or the nine-to-five, or sitting still for too long. That’s why, he says, he was made to dance all night and sleep all day

Ten drifts away from the table, floating featherlike into the crowd, and joins Wendy and seulgi under flashing lights. The three of them dance pressed up close together as people watch them with intrigued eyes. People want them or want to be them, or maybe both. Even Kun can’t say he doesn’t feel the same - he wants Ten, wants to be in love Ten openly and indulgently. And to some it might look like he already does - Ten holds his hand and Ten clings to his side and Ten goes home with him every weekend. But that isn’t romance, not in the way it could be. He watches the three of them shine and he downs his drink, and then suddenly Jungwoo is there again, sliding back into the booth.

“How do you know Ten?” He asks. “You guys seem pretty close.”

Kun doesn’t know what Jungwoo wants, but he can guess. It’s kind of funny, because Jungwoo is the sort of stupidly gorgeous person who wouldn’t have looked at him twice a few years ago. “We met at a party.”

“Of course you did. I wonder, Kun, does anyone  _ not _ meet Ten at a party?” He smiles. Even if his words sting a little, it isn't Jungwoo's fault. He isn’t making light, just speaking the truth. It’s true, Kun knows, that his and Ten’s friendship isn’t exactly revolutionary, but it still matters and that’s what counts. Jungwoo leans in closer and says, "I'll get straight to the point. Do you want to take me home later?”

It would be easy to say yes. It would be easy to say yes and slip outside the club, hail a cab and leave. Ten probably wouldn’t even notice, not for a while at least. And Jungwoo is hot, in a kind of sly but soft looking way, like he’d be fun to be around and would keep you on your toes but in a good way like the second lead in a romantic comedy movie. Jungwoo is probably the sort of boyfriend Ten would tell Kun to get, and he would coo over them and wink at them from across the room, and it would make Kun want to dig his nails into his palms too hard. Maybe it would be easy to say yes, but for that very reason, he can't.

“Maybe another time,” he says. “Sorry.”

Jungwoo doesn’t look particularly bothered by his rejection, and that’s okay. “Nevermind.” He watches Kun with big doe-like eyes and smiles a pretty, white-toothed grin. His brown hair shines an auburn colour under the lights in the club. “See you round anyway!” he gets up from the booth and gives Kun a little wave goodbye, which Kun mirrors, awkwardly.

Taeyong and Yuta appear from nowhere not long after and pull at Kun’s arms until he agrees to get up and dance with them. Yuta moans about the music, but he doesn’t miss a beat. Taeyong spills sticky drinks down his silver lurex sweater that is so oversized it fits him almost like a dress, and doesn’t even seem to notice when his drink is empty the next time he goes to take a sip. Kun feels like an imposter, someone pretending to belong here. He watches over Yuta’s shoulder: Ten across the room kissing some tall guy he vaguely recognises, swaying his hips and all the while smiling into the kiss. 

Kun can’t look away, even if he wants to.   
  



	3. chapter three: kaleidoscope eyes

Ten is already in the kitchen when Kun wakes up the next morning. It’s a quarter past nine, so he works out that they got home less than five hours ago, and have slept for less than four. It’s jarring, seeing Ten standing there in the soft morning light of his kitchen in just his underwear and one of Kun’s old t-shirts, as though this is just another daydream and not real life. “Are you okay?” Kun asks. “Are you going back to sleep?” 

Ten looks up. “I’m making coffee,” he says. “Do you want yours black?” 

Kun pauses in the doorway. “Coffee wakes you up.”

“It does indeed.” Ten smiles. “You’re very clever, have I ever told you that?” 

“Ten…” Kun watches as Ten boils up the water and gets out the cafetiere. Kun had no idea Ten even knew his way around his kitchen, even if he does spend so much time here, because when he’s here he’s usually drunk or asleep, or slowly finding his way back to reality with his eyes closed and his head resting on Kun’s lap, tired and grumpy and still perfect. “What’s going on?” 

“We’re going to brunch at Seulgi’s ex’s new restaurant,” Ten explains. “There’ll be unlimited mimosas and Seulgi has promised me the best Bloody Mary in the city. Her ex girlfriend is apparently some sort of genius with vodka.”

It makes sense to Kun, finally. The whole scene in front of him is clearer now: Ten is awake because he wants to go out.

Kun does not. _Kun’s_ usual Sunday morning activity is to read the papers and catch up with his watchlist of new cooking vlogs. About midday he’ll usually begin to gently wake Ten up to oatmeal and raspberry pancakes paired with two aspirin for his head, and then Ten will nap through the afternoon and wake up about six to hundreds of notifications on his phone - tagged photos, insta-stories, and messages about how great it was to see him the night before. But today is going to be different. Today, apparently, this gets to happen in person and last the _entire_ day. 

It’s opening weekend at the restaurant, Ten tells him, and as, Kun finds out, it’s managed by some of the same team who started up Understated. Kun suggests that this means there'll be a hype around the place that he figures probably far outweighs what it deserves and Ten ignores him and plies him with coffee and a kiss on the cheek. “We’ll have fun, it’ll be like a party," he says. "Most of the usual crowd should be there, except maybe not Jaehyun or Sicheng. And Ive heard such good things about the Bloody Marys there. Oh Kun, think of the Bloody Marys!”

Kun isn't convinced. “I don’t like Bloody Marys, but I do like to make use of my couch and read the papers.”

“Well I like them and I like you, so I need you both to be there.” Ten looks like he’s drowning in the oversized t-shirt, and his lips are chapped, and he’s only awake because he wants to surround himself with alcohol, and noise, and people who only know him skin-deep. “You _and_ Mary. So you’ll come, won’t you?”

“Yes, I’ll come." Kun pouts and Ten grins happily.

The thing is that Kun was never ever going to say no and he doesn’t understand how Ten doesn’t know this by now. Kun hasn’t said no to him since they met and maybe that’s their biggest problem, because they try to so hard to pretend to be strong, both of them do, and Ten is weak but Kun thinks that he might be even weaker, and as Kun watches Ten slide on the Gucci loafers that he complains nip at his toes, he wonders if Ten will ever stop asking him to come.

 

 

 

 

Brunch is overcrowded – all elbows in Kun's back as people push past and loud bursts of laughter from a group in the corner that Kun recognises from parties here and there. It's alcohol-fuelled, the food an afterthought that no one is really there for, and Kun thinks that if they just dimmed the lights, it would be just like any normal Friday night around here. Jungwoo isn’t there, he notes as he glances around the room, and he feels relieved that today at least he won’t have to deal with someone liking him and forcing him to confront the fact that he can’t picture himself with anyone but Ten.

Afterwards they head over to a bar on the East side, where Yuta actually claims to like the music for once. It sounds exactly the same as the music he says he hates, but Kun doesn’t point this out, it isn't worth the debate that will inevitably follow. Kun watches as Taeyong and Ten talk in hushed whispers further up the bar and they might be arguing or they might be agreeing on something, but it’s hard to tell, so Kun leaves them to it. Taeyong’s hair is a silver-blonde with darker roots peeking through and the way the colour shimmers under the white lights reminds Kun of the eyeshadow palette that Ten once dropped and smashed in his bathroom, a metallic shimmer covering the entire floor for days after.

Yuta’s still wearing last night’s clothes, Kun notes, as he sits down next to him and leans in. “Are they arguing about Doyoung again?” He nods in Ten and Taeyong’s direction. 

“Who’s Doyoung?” Kun watches the pair of them, their heads close together. They laugh, suddenly, breaking into fits of giggles as Taeyong shows Ten something on his phone. Maybe they aren’t arguing after all. 

“Just this guy Taeyong’s interested in.” Yuta steals a sip of Kun’s drink. “He and Ten have this history– No, not _that_ kind of history, stop frowning. They knew each other way back, before Ten dropped out of performing arts college and all of that stuff happened.”

“Oh.” Kun nods, as though he completely understands, like all of the words that are coming out of Yuta’s mouth are in an order that makes sense. It's not that he doesn't know anything about Ten's life prior to the last eight months, although there is a lot he doesn't know, it's just that it's easy to forget that there _was_ a before, sometimes. Ten only talks about the present, and the near future at a push. He talks about today's parties and tomorrow's drugs, and he talks about the people he knows now as though they've been in his life forever, even though Kun knows this isn't the case and that Ten only met Yuta and Taeyong since they finished college, so no more than two years ago at the most. 

Ten doesn't talk much about the past and he wears today like a mask, and he dances and he laughs and he takes colourful pills under colourful lights. So Kun doesn't know anything about performing arts college or what may or may not have happened back then, and he doesn't know what Ten sees when he closes his eyes and dreams. All that Kun knows, truly, is that _he_ dreams of Ten. "He and Doyoung... Did they used to be friends?" 

“I guess." Yuta shrugs, leaning forward on his elbows. It doesn't seem to be an interesting topic of conversation to him anymore. "So, where has your cousin been the last few weeks?"

"Sicheng? I don't know. Maybe the parties just haven't been up to his standard recently." Kun raises an eyebrow. In truth, he’s probably been watching TV and/or napping through them, but Kun likes to fuel the mysterious angle that Sicheng accidentally adopted with his irregular social schedule. Once Sicheng told Kun that sometimes people are just not worth the effort of leaving his place, and Kun sometimes feels the same, except for the fact that Ten is always the worth the effort and he’s  _always_ out. 

Yuta laughs and shakes his head. "Actually, I've come to a realisation. _I_ think we all got it wrong before. It's not that he chooses to come to the best parties, it’s just that the ones he attends turn out to be the best _because_ he's there," he says. "Funny, huh?"

"Funny," Kun repeats just as Ten looks up from his little huddle with Taeyong and catches his eye. Ten mouths, "You okay?" and gives him a questioning thumbs up. Kun returns the signal and tries to ignore the butterflies that fill his stomach as Ten watches him with a smile.

When Kun turns back to Yuta, he has finished Kun's drink and is eyeing him with curiosity. "Ten definitely smiles more when you’re out with us,” he says, just like that.

“What?” Kun blinks, the words registering slowly. He’s only had a few drinks over the course of the last three hours, but he feels like his brain is made of sand and won’t retain his thoughts properly. “What was that?”

“Ten– he’s always smiling at you, even when you don’t notice it.” He shrugs. “Just thought you might want to know. It seems like it would be important to you.”

Kun knows that Yuta doesn’t mean much of anything by it. He’s probably just being friendly, or trying to suck up to his new infatuation’s cousin, but it’s all that Kun thinks about for the rest of the day.

 

 

 

 

 

“We can stay in next weekend,” Ten says to him as they make their way back home on the subway a few hours later. Ten's leather jacket is a size too big and it makes him look as though he's borrowed it off Kun, which is pretty cute, except it makes Kun wonder if it really does belong to another man entirely. “If it really means that much to you, I’ll give it a go.”

“You will?"

“Yeah. Yeah, I think– I think that it’ll be okay, with you there.” Ten smiles at Kun, his eyes tired and a little bloodshot. “It might be kind of nice to chill out for once, and– and you can make food for us, can’t you?”

“Of course I can." Kun nods. He suddenly wonders if he’s started to hear things that aren’t real, thinks he _wants_ to hear, but he’s rolling with it regardless. "It’s a deal: I’ll make you everything you want to eat when we stay in.” 

Ten purses his lips in thought. “Chocolate sundae?” He grins. “Would that be too much trouble?” 

“If you want chocolate sundae, you get chocolate sundae,” Kun says. “It's no trouble at all.” 

It’s funny, the way that Ten’s eyes light up at this, because Kun would learn to cook a seven course gourmet meal in the next week if it would please Ten. Hell, he’d do more than that. He would steal the stars out of the sky for him and present them to him on a fucking golden platter if Ten asked him to, and yet he’s asking if an ice-cream is _too much trouble_ for Kun to make.

"That would be nice, wouldn’t it?” Ten is watching their feet as they walk in unison. It kind of sounds like he’s reassuring himself and not Kun. It makes Kun’s heart lurch a little inside his chest. "I think maybe it would be nice. Did you have fun today?”

“Of course I did,” Kun says, and it's a lie but only in the usual way that it always is, so he doesn’t feel bad about it. White lies can be excused, and  it's not that he had a _bad_ time. It’s just that Kun can never truly relax when they're out; there is always the worry at the back of his mind that Ten is going to take something bad or meet someone bad, or that the delicate balance they've perfected to keep themselves together might be unsettled and turn _everything_ bad. "Except for the part where Yuta basically told me he has a crush on my cousin, which is _not_ happening." 

Ten laughs. "Yuta's a good guy, really, he's just– he's just get's caught up in the stupid superficial stuff sometimes, like we all do. And he sleeps with too many people, like we all do." He slides his hand around Kun’s arm and rests his head against his shoulder as they walk. "It's too easy to get caught up in it all." He sighs. "It's too easy and everything else is so hard."

Kun is pretty sure that he isn't talking about Yuta anymore. "I know,” he says. “I know it is."  

He turns his head and presses a quick kiss to the top of Ten’s forehead. Ten presses his cheek closer into Kun’s arm like a kitten nestling in for comfort in return, and it makes Kun wish that Ten could truly see himself and how amazing he is the way he does.

 

 

 

 

“I’m looking forward to it,” Ten says later as he rolls up the sleeves of the hoodie he’s borrowed to sleep in and holds out his toothbrush for Kun to put the toothpaste onto.  “Staying in, I really think I’m looking forward to it.”

They brush their teeth side by side, both in Kun’s clothes, both in Kun’s bathroom. Kun gets that feeling again, the domestic feeling he got this morning as he watched Ten making coffee in his kitchen. The same way that the morning light had framed his face, angelic and soft, the warm light of the bathroom bathes Ten in a mellow glow that sets Kun’s pulse racing. “What?” he asks through a mouthful of minty foam, as he catches Kun's eye. "What is it?"

“Oh, you have a hickey,” Kun points out. He’s just noticed it. He gestures to the right side of his neck. “There. I hadn't noticed before.”

“Must’ve got it last night.” Ten tilts his head and edges closer to the mirror to examine his neck. “I can’t remember it happening, but... Yeah, that's definitely a hickey.”

Kun spits toothpaste into the basin. “Do you ever– are you ever worried you might get hurt, Ten?” 

Ten catches his gaze in his mirrored reflection. “From getting a hickey?”

“No.” Kun shakes his head. Ten is watching him intently. “No, from being so out of it.”

Ten spits out his toothpaste too, and looks down as he cleans his toothbrush underneath the running tap. Then he looks up with a smile, as though the question was never asked, and says, “Hey - as well as chocolate sundae, we should make hot, buttered popcorn next weekend, and watch all of your favourite movies. What do you think?”

Kun says, “yeah, okay then.” His heart feels heavy.

Ten leaves the bathroom with a weary sort of smile and when Kun heads into his bedroom a few moments later, Ten is pretending to be asleep.

 

 

 

 

 

Kun spends the week jotting down movie ideas in the notes app on his phone and saving webpages that list the top ten movie-night snacks to make at home (pretzel bites sound so good that he makes a trial run on Tuesday after work). On Wednesday he goes to the grocery store and buys in three different types of chocolate ice-cream, plus wafers and sprinkles and a rich, dark chocolate sauce for Ten’s sundae. He orders a new woven throw off a seller on Etsy who hand-knits blankets using only sustainable materials and he washes Ten’s favourite hoodie of his twice in his softest, conditioning, detergent.

But just after seven thirty the next Friday evening, Kun gets a text from Ten to say he’s already out with some girls he knows through events he’s worked. Ten asks for Kun to come meet them at a new bar downtown, the plan forgotten, or conveniently discarded, in favour of people and pills. 

Kun tries not to feel disappointment. He meets up with them and watches as Ten drinks, and dances so beautifully, and disappears into bathroom cubicles with a myriad of rotating men and women. He shines star-bright in his element, surrounded by people with shimmering highlight on their cheekbones and a drink in each hand and lit up by bright, neon, lights. Then, a little after three in the morning, Kun lets Ten fall asleep on his chest back at his place, and holds his hand in the bathroom when he wakes up to vomit an hour later. And all the while he successfully ignores the voice in the back of his head that says this can’t go on forever. 

The problem is that Kun is in too deep and he loves the stupid man with mussed up hair and dry lips, who lives for a synthetic kind of love that comes from colourful pills, so much that it’s _scary_. And while he sometimes likes to think he could stage an intervention, that he could love Ten enough to stop him from needing to forget himself, Kun is a realist and he knows that love conquering all only happens in stories, in movies and cliche-filled books. The problem is that love doesn’t singlehandedly make anything better, and Kun is in way over his head. 

So when Ten mumbles, “Those noodles we ate must have been bad,” while he’s crouched over the toilet with bloodshot eyes and clammy hands, Kun doesn’t bother to argue, though he knows that on balance, the cocktail of alcohol and illicit pills Ten consumed earlier that night is much more likely to be the cause of this than the noodles they picked up on the way home. Ten probably knows this too, even if he’s pretending not to for the moment.

Kun holds onto him tightly with one hand and rubs soft circles into his back with the other, and they stay like this in a gentle silence until Ten slumps against the side of the bathtub and smiles softly, and says, “Thank you. Sorry to be a nuisance…” 

Kun just says, “Stupid take-out food, making you sick like this,” and ruffles his fingers through Ten’s damp hair. “It must have been the chicken.” 

He’s lying to them both, and they both know it, but they continue with the charade and google ‘ _best remedy for mild food poisoning_ ’ on Kun’s phone before they go back to bed, Ten snuggled up into Kun’s side. Kun waits until Ten’s breaths are even and he can tell he’s sleeping - that he’s ok - before he allows himself to fall asleep with one hand around Ten’s slender shoulders, holding him close, as though he thinks that if he lets go Ten might disappear completely. Maybe he does think that, maybe it’s true. Or maybe, he worries, Ten is already halfway gone anyway.

 


	4. chapter four: with the sun in his eyes

Once, a couple of months after they’d first been introduced, Ten had dragged Kun to some apartment party in a loft conversion that could have housed three families. It’s owner had decorated the entire two thousand square feet with art that Kun liked, but clearly a minimal aesthetic in regards to furniture (basically, there wasn't much of it), which Kun thought a little strange. "He takes a lot of cocaine," Taeyong had said by way of explanation, but Kun didn't think that explained much.

The loft was a time-warp, where it seemed that time slowed down for Kun only, and so the party went on and on and never seemed to end. Taeyong and Ten had danced and danced, and danced some more, in the centre of the minimally dressed room, like they were part of the artwork themselves - on display for all to see, just how they enjoyed being then and still do now. Ten had just had another two piercings done in his left ear. His jeans were ripped at the thighs and his top was short, skimming his navel and rising up every time he raised his arms above his head. It was mesmerising, and Kun could still see the tanned skin of Ten’s waist even when he looked away, like it was haunting him.

Sicheng had dropped by for all of thirty minutes, before leaving with Lucas and an eighth of Jaehyun’s stash to go and watch old reruns of Masterchef while getting high. They’d invited Kun to leave with them, but he’d shaken his head and gestured towards the makeshift dance-floor, where Ten was. “I’m with Ten,” he’d mouthed, the music loud around them in the echoing space. "I'll stay."

Lucas had looked towards Ten, who was spinning, dreamlike, in circles and then he had looked back at Kun, a knowing look on his face that turned into a giant grin. “ _Oh_ , you’re trying to fuck Ten!” He’d called over the music. “That’s cool, man.”

“No– no,” Kun had replied, a little awkward, heat rising at his cheeks. “No, I’m just… I said I wouldn’t go home without him.”

“Oh.” Lucas had nodded a lot, then. He didn’t look convinced. “That’s cool too!”

Sicheng had whispered something to Lucas that Kun couldn’t hear, and then Sicheng had glanced back at Kun over his shoulder and he’d given him a smile paired with concerned eyes that made Kun feel lost and out of his depth, and he'd texted Sicheng after they'd left to find out what he'd whispered about him, but Sicheng had never replied. Kun watched them go, and then time moved at half speed again for another few hours.

It was at a little after 5.30am, the sun rising over a cityscape of grey and reflective glass buildings, when Ten had tiptoed around someone’s sleeping form on the floor (Taeyong’s Maybe, Kun can’t remember) and had stood at the window with Kun. He had smudged liner on the corner of his eyes and blissed-out haze of a smile on his mouth. “This view is beautiful,” he’d said. “Don’t you think?”

“Yeah.” Kun did think so, he's always liked the beauty of a morning sky: fresh and emerging with such hope. Just like Ten every time he smiles. The moment in itself had felt beautiful too, what with Ten at his side and the warmth of the early summer sun beaming in through the windows onto them, Christening them with the new day.

“I can’t believe you’re still here.” Ten had smiled at him. “I thought you might have left earlier when Lucas did, I couldn’t see you for a while and I thought you must have gone with him and your cousin.”

“I said I’d stay.” Kun shrugs. “Someone found a set of playing cards and I revived my sleight of hand skills for a while. Everyone was so wasted, I could have done _anything_ and they’d have been impressed.”

“You’re lucky Lucas had left this place by then, his mind would have been blown and he'd never have left you alone.” Ten laughed. “He thinks magic is– well, _magic_.”

“Who says it isn’t?” Kun raised his eyebrows then, a hint of a smile at his lips. "I'll have you know, I'm a real magician."

Ten had giggled and hidden a stifled yawn behind his hand. “I’m tired and I’m thirsty,” he’d groaned. “I've tried but I can’t find a non-alcoholic beverage in this entire place.”

“There’s a kitchen with a tap, you know.” It seemed an obvious solution to him, but not to Ten, apparently, who had eyed him with distaste and pulled a gnarly face.

“I'm sorry Kun, but do I _look_ like I drink tap water?”

Ten, Kun thought, looked like he only drank the sweet, honeyed nectar of the gods, but that was not the right answer, so instead Kun had smiled and said, “Well, you drink it at my place sometimes when we run out of bottled. So… Yes?”

“You mean you don’t have a filter?” Ten had looked particularly scandalised at the mere thought of it. “I can’t believe I’ve been drinking gross city tap water since we met.” He’d stuck out his tongue, petulant and dramatic and Kun had known for sure that he must be a total goner for Ten - no doubts about it - because he was still in love with him regardless of his tantrum face.

“You’ve been drinking _my_ gross city tap water,” Kun replies, with a smile. “What can I say? I’m a simple man with simple tastes.”

“Oh, no.” Ten had looked at him with sparkling eyes. “I think you’re rather complicated.”

“Should we get out of here and find some overpriced bottled water that’s up to your high standards?” Kun had nudged at Ten’s side and had smiled despite himself at the way Ten was pouting at being made fun of. “Would that make you happy?”

“Happy? I’m too sober for happy, too aware of — ugh, things.” He’d sighed, then. His face gave nothing away, his beauty was as bright as ever, a calm picture of serenity as he watched the sun rise. If Kun didn’t know better, he’d think Ten to be completely content in this moment, but even back then he knew that Ten was more complicated than that. Maybe he just didn't realise exactly what that meant yet.

“Of what?”

“Oh, you know—the reality that I’m just a hungover shell of a person with no redeeming features.” Ten had slipped his hand into Kun’s and it fit there so perfectly that Kun’s breath caught in the back of his throat. Then Ten had smiled so, so brightly in that special way of his that he uses to distract people from his sadness, like his own magic trick. It had worked, because Kun's brain was stuck on how beautiful Ten looked and not how sad his words had been. And it meant that Ten could say, “Now, let’s get our gorgeous asses out of here,” and lead him outside without a word, and get away with it.

They had walked for blocks and blocks, Ten striding ahead as the heels of his boots clacked against the concrete. He would pause in front of Kun every so often and twirl around to face him, sunglasses sliding down his nose. “Come on! Can’t you keep up, o do you just like the view?” He had called, hand on his hip. “I know I look good from every angle.”

He’d stuck out his tongue and Kun had rolled his eyes at him and laughed, and said, “I’m just enjoying our morning stroll, that’s all.”

“ _Morning stroll_ ! How old are you, again? Are you twenty three or sixty three?” Ten’s laughter was obnoxiously loud, but it was barely seven in the morning and they were alone on the street, so it didn’t matter much. Ten had looked at him steadily, gaze softer. “You really are something else, Qian Kun. Maybe you _are_ magical.”

At the time, Kun had felt like they might both actually be, especially together, but know he guesses that he was only underestimating the way the world can drag you down with it without even trying too hard.

 

 

 

  

Ten sleeps through most of Saturday after his night of throwing up and blaming innocent food vendors for it. Kun checks on him every few hours, holds a glass of water to his lips and presses the back of his hand to Ten’s forehead to check on his temperature. “I’m just hungover.” Ten opens one eye, mumbles and waves Kun’s hand away. His hair is fanned out over Kun’s pillow like a black halo. “Stop worrying.”

“I thought it was food poisoning.” Kun raises an eyebrow at him. “I thought it was bad noodles. That’s what you said.”

Kun doesn’t call Ten out much, if ever, because he hates to do it. He hates the way his throat constricts and his voice wavers as he speaks. He hates the way that Ten’s confident expression falls from place, and doubt fills his eyes. He hates it because Ten hates it, even if it’s necessary. They’re friends, they’re more than friends - whatever they are - and the lies are dumb. Kun is dumb, he knows it. But he’s trying not to be and this comes as part of it.

“It is,” Ten says. He closes his eyes, his hand covering his face. “Or I– I don’t know, it might be.” He sighs, audible, irritable, sad.

Kun says, more softly now, “Whatever it is, you need to keep sipping the water.”

“I know, I will.” Ten peeks through his fingers. “Please don’t worry about me, just pretend I’m not here. Unless– do you need me to go home? Am I being a bother? This is your bed.”

“Of course you aren’t a bother, you stay here most Saturdays. Why would today be different?” Kun replies and sits down on the bed. Ten moves his hand away from his face, lets it drop to his side on the bed, next to where Kun sits.

“Maybe I'm a bother everyday.” Ten drums his fingers against Kun’s thigh slowly He watches Kun, eyes dark and sad and mouth set into a petulant kind of pout that Kun sometimes wants to kiss away. “I know I’m a bother. I can’t stand myself sometimes, and I _have_ to live with me.”

“Shhh.” Kun’s heart breaks into tiny fragments as he takes in Ten’s expression and the way that his eyebrows knit together in a frown. He takes Ten’s hand and rubs soft circles on the back of it with his thumb, and aches with how helpless he feels and how much he would give to make Ten happy. “I want you here. Stay as long as you want to.”

He doesn't leave the room again until Ten falls back to sleep.

 

 

 

 

Kun checks on Ten again an hour later. The room is dark, only a slither of light breaking in through the gap between the bottom of the blind hanging up at the window and the window ledge. Ten’s curled onto his side, his palm underneath his cheek as he sleeps. Kun wonders what he’s dreaming of and whether he’s happy in his dreams. He is impossibly tiny looking in the middle of Kun’s bed and nothing like the monumental explosion of energy, and excitement, and animation that he is when he’s surrounded by neon strobe lighting.

Kun doesn’t mean to wake him, but Ten’s eyelids flutter open and he says, “Hey,” his voice raspy. He pushes himself up onto his elbow and reaches for the glass of water on Kun’s nightstand.

“Hey.” Kun smiles at him. “Do you feel better? Would you feel up to eating something? You should eat something or you’re going to have no energy later. I can go out and get bagels if you want me to?”

Ten starts to laugh before he even sets the glass of water back down on the nightstand. Kun doesn’t understand what could be so funny. “What?”

Ten shakes his head. He sits up and gestures for Kun to come over and join him, his arm outstretched and grasping for Kun's arm. “It’s just– ah, you’re so cute.”

“Cute?” Kun sits down and Ten shuffles over and pats the space next to him so Kun will sit next to him properly. Kun follows suit. The bed is warm from where Ten has been lying and it makes him want to sink into the feeling.

“Yes, _cute_ ,” Ten smiles at him. “You’re, like, what they call husband material. You’ll make someone the perfect partner one day.”

But Kun doesn't want someone, whoever that is, he doesn’t want anyone else at all. He just wants _Ten._  “Thank you, I guess.”

Ten rolls his eyes at Kun’s humility and then nudges at his side with his shoulder.  “You guess? I don’t just compliment anyone, Qian Kun,” he says. “So you should take my words to heart. You’re a keeper and I’m already jealous. _And_ your bed is always so safe and inviting, mine is cold and lonely and gives me nightmares." He closes his eyes, resting his head back against the wall. “Before, when you said I could stay– When you said I could stay as long as I wanted, did you mean it?”

Kun breathes in. “Yeah, I meant it.”

“But what if I wanted to stay forever?”

“Then you could. You’re a keeper too,” he says. He is suddenly very conscious of his heartbeat and the presence of Ten’s hand so close to his on the bed next to him. He can hear a youtube video playing on his laptop in the kitchen, it must have autoplayed after the end of the cooking vlog he was watching. “I think you’re magical.”

Ten opens his eyes and stares at him, his gaze intense and unreadable. He stares and Kun stares back, and Kun feels like he’s standing on the very edge of a precipice and staring into the pitch black ocean. He’s tempted to jump into it and see what awaits him.

Ten looks away first. He slides his hand around the top of Kun’s arm, rests his cheek against Kun’s shoulder and sighs. “Jaehyun is having a small party at his place tonight. We should drop by,” he says and, just like that, the moment is over.

 


	5. chapter five: and he's gone

Ten hates to be alone, but he also hates to feel like a burden. Kun figured this out a long time ago, not long after they met, when Ten would take his hand and say, unsure, “can I sleep at yours again tonight?” after parties, even ones that took place closer to Ten’s apartment than his.

Kun had wondered, then, whether the all nighters and his constantly revolving social circle of people that he barely recognise in the daylight might be an elaborate form of distraction from himself. Now he’s certain.

“You are a good person,” Ten had told him once, wearing sleepy eyes on a midnight subway train. “And I am an empty husk. _I_ am a floating empty space where a good person could be standing instead, isn’t that funny?”

He’d been drunk or high, or both, at the time. And Kun had shaken his head and put his arm around Ten’s shoulders, and had said, “You are so wrong about that. You’re funny and kind, and you make people smile. _You_ are a better person than most.”

“No.” Ten had sighed. “No, I’m not. You just don’t know me well enough yet. In time you’ll realise. With time, it’ll come, and then you’ll see me the way I do.”

But all that Kun found came with time was more and more love, and more and more longing, and worry, and fear.

So, now, Kun loves Ten and Ten loves to party, or that’s what he wants people to think.  But, sometimes, Kun wonders if maybe Ten doesn’t love to party at all. Maybe he’s just addicted to loud noises and air kisses and the way that the drugs and drink make him feel like a whole person for a while -  a debauched sort of security blanket that he can’t let go of, that he grips onto tightly, holding it close even as it suffocates him. Kun doesn’t know what to do, how to help, he just knows he needs Ten to be okay at the end of it all.

 

 

 

 

A week after they don’t end up staying in, Kun finds himself back in Understated for the second time that month. Understated is the place that most reminds him that has life has become a time-loop of forced smiles and conversations he can barely hear over synth-pop he only half-knows from the radio, one eye on Ten all the time. Tonight, at least the whole group of their friends is out too – Lucas and Sicheng shouting into each other’s ears animatedly about something across the booth they sit in, Yuta trying to look cooly disinterested next to them, but failing, as he clearly strains to hear what's so interesting, and Taeyong showing himself off with finesse under a spotlight near the DJ booth.

Kun watches as Ten dances with Taeyong, his metallic-gold blouse, cut off just above his belly-button shimmering in the spotlight, and then as he drifts away into a flock of Wendy and Seulgi’s red lipsticked friends, who run long acrylic nails through long hair and sip their drinks through short straws. They’re an identikit set of beautiful people, but Ten stands out. Ten always stands out, no matter where they are or what he’s wearing, at least to Kun.

When Kun glances across the room again five minutes later, Ten is no longer surrounded by Wendy's flock. Now he’s at the edge of the dancefloor, his mouth to the ear of a guy that Kun vaguely recognises from the last time they were here. He has to lean down, head tilted to the side for Ten to reach his ear, even with Ten standing on the very tip-toes of his heeled boots, and his lips quirk up into a pleased smile at what Ten is saying. Both of them laugh, Ten’s hand on the other man’s arm, and, as the scene unfolds, Kun fidgets under the table. He feels wound up so tightly that it hurts, and it’s not until Sicheng appears at his side and nudges him with a sharp elbow that he realises just how tense he is - his shoulders set and jaw clenched until he lets go.

“Oh,” he breathes, spell broken as he unhinges his jaw and blinks into reality. He’s embarrassed all of a sudden, caught in the act of being in love. His cheeks burn. Sicheng nudges him again, watching his face closely. “You look very serious,” he says and furrows his eyebrows to mimic what Kun must look like. He _does_ look serious if Sicheng’s impression is accurate and it probably is, but Kun can’t quite find it in himself to care.

“Who is that?” Kun asks it before his brain knows his mouth is open. “Over there, with Ten?”

Sicheng doesn’t seem surprised by the question. He follows Kun’s gaze back to the dancefloor. “The tall one? That’s–  Thats... I _do_ know his name, he used to DJ at the Arcadia.” Sicheng bites at his fingernail, thinking hard. “I can’t remember. Shall I ask Taeyong later if he-”

Kun cuts him off. “Don’t worry, it’s not important,” he says, even though it feels very important, like it matters _a lot_ , and Kun feels so stupid, but he can’t help it. He feels weird tonight - flustered, tense, lost. He’s not even that drunk, but maybe that’s the issue. Maybe he needs to loosen up more. An ex told him that once, said, “loosen up, Kun, no one will ever find you fun to be around if you don’t loosen up.” He’s an ex for a reason, but the words have stayed with Kun, ready and waiting to bubble up to the surface every so often. They’re the reason he was persuaded to come out to that first party, the one where he met Ten. “It doesn’t matter who he is.”

“It doesn’t?” Sicheng asks. He’s doing that wise oracle thing again, where his eyes are suggesting he knows everything inside Kun’s mind, but he’s humouring him with pretending he doesn’t. They grew up together, so maybe he does know more than he lets on, or maybe he’s just hoping Kun will open up. Kun won’t open up, he has nothing to say. “Are you sure about that?” Sicheng raises an eyebrow and waits for Kun to respond.

Kun sometimes wonders how obviously in love with Ten he actually is and if there is anyone who doesn’t pity him at this point. Not that he can blame them for it, it’s just that other people only see the nightclub dancefloors and the insta-stories and the part that Ten acts so excellently of someone who looks in the mirror and sees beauty and confidence and completeness. They see Kun on the sidelines and Ten as the centre of everything, and that’s it. But that’s not it at all, that’s only the very surface.

“I’m sure.” Kun takes a sip of his drink, resolute and stubborn. Sicheng watches him until Lucas taps his shoulder and shouts down his ear that they’re heading out the back to smoke. Sicheng asks, “You coming with us?” and picks up his phone from the table. It lights up with notifications that Sicheng promptly ignores. Kun is sure he sees Yuta’s name on the screen.

Kun doesn’t want to stand in the cold and smoke, not really, but when he turns to the dancefloor, Ten is smiling prettily with an open mouth and lowered eyes, as the man behind him grinds up against his ass, and maybe Kun needs some fresh air after all.

“Sure, why not.” He nods and follows his friends through the crowd and outside.

Jaehyun is there, when they get outside, and Sicheng hugs him while Lucas trips over on the sidewalk and laughs at himself. Jaehyun gives Kun a nod when he sees him and takes a long drag of the joint he’s holding, before offering it to Kun with a smile. His dimples show as he does and Kun can’t help but wonder what Ten thinks of those dimples, and of the rest of him too. He knows that Ten and Jaehyun used to be a regular thing, back around the time he met them both and he’s heard it’s over, but tonight his head is stuck on Ten and other people, and even in the sobering night air, it won’t let up. Sometimes Kun wonders exactly what there was between Jaehyun and Ten. Was it fooling around every so often at a party? Was it just late night booty-calls or was it morning kisses and heart emojis? Why does it matter anyway? Kun feels shallow, and selfish and small, and he thinks about it right now as he smokes Jaehyun’s pot and half-listens to Yuta complain about his uber driver giving him a mediocre rating. Jaehyun’s dimples slide out of view as he takes back the joint, and Kun realises then that he’s staring and looks away pointedly.

He gets out his phone and texts Ten to let him know where he is, just incase he’s wondering. Ten replies almost straight away, and it’s only a thumbs up emoji, but it’s enough to know he’s okay. _Loosen up, Kun,_ he thinks fleetingly, but it’s easier thought than done. Still, he can try, for everyone’s sake.

 

 

 

 

Kun tries as hard as he can, but at the most he can only pretend to be enjoying himself slightly more than he usually does. He stays outside even after Jaehyun disappears and Sicheng heads back inside to order more drinks, Yuta following close behind. Lucas stays with him, finishing his cigarette and talking about his newfound ability to cook something other than instant noodles. Kun appreciates the conversation and Lucas asks him to grill him on timings for the perfect scrambled egg and how to correctly cut open a mango, so he does. Lucas is distracted after a while by a girl with cat-eyes and plum-coloured hair just as it starts to rain, so Kun leaves him to flirt under the canopy and heads back inside, to find their other friends.

Their booth has been taken by a group he doesn’t recognise. He winds through the crowds towards the bar, where he can see Taeyong talking to Yuta, but that’s all. He can’t seem to spot who he’s actually looking for. He heads through to the dancefloor, which is busier now, and searches for a flash of gold amongst the silver, but Ten isn’t there either. “Have you seen Ten?” he calls as Seulgi slides past him, guiding a girl with her. She shakes her head apologetically and continues on her way. Her ponytail sways as she makes her way, determined, through the bodies and Kun turns back to the throng of people and strains his head to see all the way through to near the DJ booth, but he still can’t see Ten, and it’s so unusual, so alien to him, because usually Ten is all he _can_ see.

He heads back to the bar, elbowing through people who give him dirty looks, but he doesn’t really care what they think. “Yuta. Hey!” he calls as he reaches his friends. “Where’s Ten?”

“Where have you been?” It’s Taeyong who turns around and answers him. He looks confused to see Kun standing in front of him. “He went to find you _ages_ ago.”

 

 

 

 

It’s outside the front entrance that Kun sees him, standing lost, arms crossed over his chest as he shivers, allowing the rain to shower over him. When Ten spots him, he rushes over and throws his arms around Kuns neck, almost knocking them both to the floor, and it reminds Kun that although he’s tiny, he’s a force, always. Kun feels intense relief, wrapping his arms around Ten’s back to steady him. “You’re soaking, Ten.”

“I’m sorry,” Ten whispers, as he leans against him. He’s a dead weight, but Kun manages to hold him up. It’s raining heavily now, the heavens open wide as water runs down Ten’s forehead and into his eyes, dripping off his eyelashes. They’re impossibly long, they’ve always been impossibly long. Kun brushes the wet hair from Ten’s forehead. “I thought you’d left and I didn’t want to have to go home by myself, so I found Wendy’s friend with the lipstick and she was so kind, she gave me her _last one_.”

“What did you take?” Kun asks him. “Just– just in case I need to know. Can you remember?”

“I didn’t want to be tired, so I took it, but it’s okay. They’re _good_ for me. Like you are.” Kun knows he won’t get an answer out of Ten now. He probably doesn’t even know himself what he’s taken, not for sure. He closes his eyes. His heart beats heavily, his throat constricts.

“I’ve never been compared to club drugs before,” Kun mutters, mainly to himself. It’s all he can reply. Ten wobbles on his feet and Kun tries to hold him steadier. “Our cab will be here soon, if you can just stand up for a few more minutes, we can– oops.”

Ten slides to the floor, out of Kun’s grip. He sits down on the sidewalk and smiles up at Kun. “I’m on the floor.” He smiles, lopsided and sad, and beautiful. “Where I belong.”

Kun sits down next to him. His jeans are immediately wet. They must look like such a mess, he thinks, and if he cared anymore about what outsiders think about him, or about Ten, maybe he’d feel embarrassed, but it’s been a long, long time since he’s cared about anyone other than the man sitting next to him, head thrown back, smiling up into the sky as the rain pelts his face. Tonight has made that as clear as ever.

When their cab arrives, and they clamber into the backseat, Ten yawns, and says, “You shouldn’t have to do this– take me home like this. It’s so stupid.”

“I don’t mind.” It’s the truth. He really doesn’t, not one bit, and he wishes Ten would realise it.

Ten closes his eyes and holds his breath. “I’m sorry,” he says, breathing out slowly as his eyelids flutter open. Kun leans over and winds down the window a little to let in some air. “I mean it, I’m sorry.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” Kun replies and lets Ten lean against him. “And _I_ mean that.”

Ten shakes his head. “I hurt people,” he whispers. “I hurt people because I’m just an empty space. I’m not even a _person_ , Kun, I’m an empty space.” He turns his head and stares out of the window. It’s only rolled down a few inches, but rain gets in through the gap and sprays them both anyway.

“You’re–  you’re _not_ , I promise you,” Kun says, but Ten doesn’t react, so he wraps his hand around Ten’s wrist and squeezes it gently. “Look, this is a real arm. And this”– he pinches Ten’s nose as soon as he turns back to face him– “is a very real, very cute nose. You are a real and you’re _person_ shaped.”

He smiles and Ten smiles too. He’s so beautiful, even when he’s saying the saddest words in a cab at three in the morning. “You’re silly,” he mumbles, rolling his eyes. They’re red, and he looks _so_ tired and so ready to fall apart, that it breaks Kun’s heart a little bit more. “Just ignore me when I say dumb things. I don’t mean them.”

Kun doesn’t believe him, not even for a second.

Later, as Kun turns down the blankets on his bed and Ten drinks a large glass of water, Kun takes a deep breath and broaches the subject they never broach. “It’s okay to not– to be unhappy, you know.”

Ten finishes the water and wipes his mouth. He says nothing, just starts to unbutton his blouse, the wet material clinging to his body. Kun throws him a hoodie and takes a breath. “But maybe– maybe it would be worth, uh, talking to someone. Lots of people see doctors and therapists and if–”

He stops to instinctively catch Ten’s blouse when he throws it across the room at him with a giggle, anything to stop him talking. “I talk to my friends Molly and Lucy _all the time_. And I’m not unhappy.” Ten smiles at him, desperate eyes begging Kun to believe him. “I’m smiling, see? I’m totally fine. Let’s just go to sleep."  
  
But Kun can’t sleep, even long after Ten has fallen asleep, breathing softly against his shoulder. He lies awake, jaw set, muscles tense and thinks, _he’s fine, he’s fine, he’s fine_ , but no matter how many times he repeats it in his mind, it never quite rings true.


	6. chapter six: rocking horse people

 

 

Kun meets Sicheng for a coffee before work a few days later.

It feels like old times, when they’d just started college in the same city and they would meet before classes, fresh-faced and excited about finally feeling like adults. Kun would like to go back to then, sometimes. Ironically, though, when he was in college he got more sleep than he does most weekends now.

It’s Sicheng who calls _him_ , but when Kun answers the phone with a hello, Sicheng sounds like he’s only just woken up and is completely surprised to find himself on a telephone call.

“Hi!” he says, an octave higher than normal.

Kun tries not to laugh at the weirdness. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, it’s just–” There is shuffling in the background, and then Sicheng makes a short, angry noise.

“Coffee?” he asks, short and clipped, when he returns to the conversation, and Kun is apparently expected to work out what he means by it.

“What about it?” Kun tucks his phone under his ear as he searches for the key-fob he needs to get into his office. “Are you asking me if I like drinking it? Because, yes, I do.”

He finds the key-fob on the coffee table underneath a tattered copy of Silvia Plath’s Ariel that the inside cover suggest has been overdue back at the city library for six years. It’s one of many of Ten’s belongings that litters Kun’s place. Except, litters isn’t the right word, because that would suggest the items are disposable. The items aren’t disposable; they’re parts of Ten, every single one: the oversized hoodie from one of his exes, the candle almost worn down to the wick that smells of lavender, a myriad of tiny rings and silver hoops for his ears, a toothbrush, that pair of silver lurex leggings Kun swears Ten has never worn… All things that Kun lives with even when Ten isn’t there. He couldn’t imagine them gone, now.

“I’m not asking if you like it, I _know_ you like it,” Sicheng replies, exasperated. “Do you have time for one? Before work?”

Kun shoves his key-fob into his trouser pocket and checks his watch. It’s only seven-forty and he doesn’t need to be in the office until nine. “A quick one, sure,” he says. “Now?”

“For fucks sake, will you just leave already?” Sicheng hisses to someone in the background. He clears his throat as he returns to the call, “I can be at the Starbucks near your office in twenty minutes, meet you there?”

Kun has no idea what’s so important, but he has no reason to say no, so he heads to Starbucks, even though it’s way more expensive than his usual haunt, and waits for his cousin.

They order their drinks and sit on one of the sofas near the window, Kun blowing into his black coffee, which is far too hot to drink. Sicheng, who is wise beyond his years but finds it easier to hide it under small smiles and uninterested shrugs, says to him, “This time last year, I would never have flagged you as Ten’s type of friend.”

Kun’s heart does the weird flip it always does when people bring up Ten around him, like he’s nervous about what they’re going to say to him. “Why not?”

“I just never pegged you for the, you know, “party boy” type.” He does the air quotes with his fingers lazily, rolls his eyes as he says it as though he knows it’s a dumb description.

It’s not wrong though, not really since Ten literally calls himself that. His instagram handle is sadpartyboy96, and Kun knows it isn’t even meant to be ironic.

Kun shrugs. “Neither are you and you’re the pinnacle of the scene, apparently.”

“We both know that’s not true.” Sicheng pulls a face. “The point is, I’d rather stay in and watch Hells Kitchen, but sadly Netflix doesn’t have all of the seasons up, so _sometimes_ I have to go out.”

Kun smiles at him, he appreciates the humour. “I do love that show.”

“Right? And I know you’ve always liked to go out every once in a while, we both do… But people like Taeyong and Ten, and Yuta and all that… They’re _always_ out. That’s their lives, you know?” Sicheng’s face softens. “I just don’t… You never seem to be having that much fun.”

Kun sips his coffee even though it’s too hot. The burn is a nice distraction from how right Sicheng is. “Uhuh.”

“So why do you go out every single weekend? Why don’t you take a weekend off?” Sicheng asks. “My mom keeps asking where you are when we have family lunches. We still do that every last Sunday of the month, you know. And you never come anymore.”

Kun can tell his face has fallen, that he’s on the defensive now. He can’t help it, he knows he’s been ignoring every other part of his life, but he has to. Ten needs him and he needs Ten and it’s a weird sort of codependency that makes him feel so, so scared. He’s the sensible one, he’s the reliable one, but maybe he’s not that at all. “I can do what I want. And I go out because…"

“Because Ten goes out.” Sicheng looks at him.

“Is that a problem?” Kun crosses his arms. His whole body feels tense, like he’s turning into stone. Sicheng doesn’t _understand_ , but why would he? How would anyone who only sees the bright smile, the blinding charm and air-kisses understand? They don’t know the blank stares and chewed lips and the tiny sobs that escape Ten’s throat when he thinks Kun is still asleep. They don’t, and it’s not their fault.

Kun tries to remember this and see his cousin’s concern for him at its basic level. Headline: Boring man stupidly in love with tiny dancer who lives only for Saturday night,

“No.” Sicheng takes a breath, and Kun feels guilty for making this so difficult for him, but he can’t help it. “No, of course not. I just worry.”

“About him?”

“About _you_.” Sicheng clicks his tongue. “About both of you. Is he… Okay?”

“He’s fine, we’re both fine.” What a fucking _liar_ he feels. Kun can hardly believe himself, the words all sound alien as they leave his mouth, but he rolls on with them anyway. “He told me so himself. He’s... You know I’m always looking out for him.”

“Right.” Sicheng sips at his coffee. His face is almost unreadable, but his mask doesn't quite hide the cynicism. He drums his fingernails on his coffee cup. “I see.”

“I’m gonna be late for work if I don’t go now.” Kun stands up too quickly and the blood-rush makes him feel dizzy. His palms are sweaty as he smiles at Sicheng, fake and bright and in a terrible rush to get the fuck out of there. He says, “It’s been really good to catch up in daylight. See you soon,” and then he leaves Sicheng in the window by himself.

Kun isn’t late for work, but he might as well have been, because concentrating on the audit proposal he’s meant to be handing over by six PM is near impossible. He spends his day at the water-cooler, in the bathroom, reading every other word of a file and then having to read it again, and again, and still not taking in what it says. He smiles, white teeth lined up in a perfect row, at his co-workers, who smile back at him as though he’s in the room with them and not blinking back panic and worry and the bitter taste of truth he can’t seem to face when it’s asked of him.

He turns in his proposal at five fifty seven and it’s not great, but it’s done, and that’s all he can manage today.

 

 

 

 

Someone throws a party on the weekend in a townhouse that’s only one stop away from Kun’s place on the train, and all that Kun can think as they ride there is that at least they don’t have far to come home afterwards.

Since the coffee date-come-intervention staged by his cousin, Kun’s felt even more fraudulent than usual. He knows Ten isn’t okay. He knows it, Ten knows it, _everyone_ knows it. But he’d lied to Sicheng, to himself, as usual.

Ten naps with his head in Kun’s nap for most of Saturday. He’s hungover from some work party and his phone vibrates with messages and tags on facebook constantly. “Turn it off for me,” Ten mumbles, putting his phone into Kun’s waiting hand a little after one in the afternoon.

Kun struggles to figure out how to turn off Ten’s phone for thirty seconds, before Ten takes it back and easily slides it to power off.

“I forgot you’re so old you can’t use technology.” Ten sticks out his tongue.

“We’re literally the same age,” Kun retorts. Ten just sticks out his tongue again. He closes his eyes. “Can we close the blinds? The light is hurting my head.”

Kun rolls his eyes. “Well, you’re hurting my legs, but I’m not complaining about it.”

“I’m not.” Ten wriggles in his lap like a kitten and it’s distracting. “I have a nice, dainty head.”

Kun laughs, cards his fingers through Ten’s hair. “Yeah, you do,” he says, and Ten opens one eye and smiles at him in a way that makes Kun want to do something stupid, like lean down and kiss him. He’s been thinking about that a lot lately.

(Ten, Kun knows, has kissed most of their friends. “It’s practically his form of handshake,” Taeyong had said once with an air of pride mixed with amusement. It was only a few weeks after he’d first met Ten.

“On the cheek?” Kun had asked. “He’s kissed me on the cheek I think.”

Seulgi had laughed at them both then, giggled behind her hand and had shaken her head. “No, not on the cheek,” she’d said.

So, Kun had waited for it: the kiss on the mouth that was sure to come, that he saw Ten share with people he’d known for five minutes, or less. But it hadn’t come, not that it mattered. Kun had come to realise that it was probably for the best, being in love with him and all. Platonic kissing is only platonic if both sides feel the same.)

Ten clicks his fingers in Kun’s face. “Earth to Kun,” he sing-songs. “Come back to me.”

“I didn’t go anywhere,” Kun says. His cheeks hurt from smiling.

“Good, wouldn’t want you to.” Ten yawns. He falls back to sleep within a few minutes, the blinds still open behind them, and he stays there, sleeping soundly, until it’s almost dark again.

By eight-thirty, however, Ten is wide awake, pulling on skinny jeans that are so tight they show off _everything_ and shouting a story about Seulgi’s ex-girlfriend through Kun’s open bedroom door.

Ten pours them a shot of vodka each, holds Kun’s face still and applies black khol to the corners of his eyes. “It suits you,” Ten says, concentration etched into his features as he cups Kun’s jaw with one hand and lines his eyelid with the other. “You’re so handsome.”

“Should we get brunch in the morning?” Kun says as best as he can while Ten is holding his face.

“What?” Ten steps back, but he doesn’t let go of Kun. He considers his work, turns Kun’s face to the left a little and then moves back in, pencil in hand.

Kun repeats, “Should we get brunch–”

“I heard you,” Ten says. “But how can we? We won’t be awake in time! We’re going out _now._ ” He smudges the kohl over Kun’s eyelid and then lets go, putting down the eyeliner pencil and picking up his shot-glass in one smooth movement.

Kun doesn’t pick the other glass up. “It can’t be good for you to never see daylight at the weekend, Ten.”

“How often do I have to tell you not to bother yourself with worrying about me, huh? You’re not my assigned guardian angel.” Ten takes his shot. When Kun doesn’t go to pick up the other glass, Ten picks it up and takes that one too.

“I don’t know…” Kun shrugs, tries out a smile. “What if it turns out that I am?”

“Then you’re doing an amazing job, sweetie.” Ten grins at him - all teeth and glossy lips and eyes that scream, _please drop the subject._ “Come on, let’s go have some fun,” he says, and less than thirty minutes later they’re in someone else’s place, drinking someone else’s liquor, someone else’s music blasting from a stereo-system that’s louder than it needs to be.

 

 

 

 

 

Seulgi is back with her ex, Irene, Taeyong tells them, and when she arrives at the party she leads Irene around the room, offering introductions to people who Irene clearly isn’t interested in speaking to.

Yuta and Ten are in the middle of a pretty intense discussion about the best way to wear a fedora, which they both end up agreeing is not at all, when Seulgi approaches them with a grin.

“Meet Yuta, Ten - I’ve told you about him, remember - and this is Kun, Ten’s boyfriend? Right?” She looks between him and Ten, a hand at the small of Irene’s back. Irene smiles at them and puts up her hand in a little wave.

“What?” Ten laughs, and then he stops and stares at Seulgi like she’s grown an extra head. “What? Are you joking?”

“No?” Seulgi muses. She doesn’t seem to understand why Ten is so outraged. Kun feels awkward, embarrassed. Wonders, _Is it really that bad a thought to Ten?_ “But you–– you’re always together.”

Ten rolls his eyes. “So? You’ve seen me make-out with a thousand other people, you know I’m single.”

She shrugs. “I didn’t claim to know if you were exclusive,” she says, and Kun appreciates that this would be refreshing perspective if it wasn’t making him feel a little nauseous at how offended Ten seems to be.

“Look, Kun is the best person in this room. He is _inherently_ good.” Ten puts his hand to his chest and pretends to be welling up with emotion. “I’m not his boyfriend. It would _taint_ him.”

 _Oh._ So Ten is offended, but not for himself. He’s offended on _Kun’s_ behalf.

Kun puts up his hand to disagree. Says, “I don’t think–”

“Don’t argue with me.” Ten ushers Kun’s arm back down. His fingers brush Kun’s skin lightly. “Kun’s amazing, and he’s _not_ my boyfriend.”

“So quick to deny!” Yuta laughs. ”What’s so wrong with Kun?” he asks. He’s joking, it’s a joke, but Ten looks oh-so-serious when he replies.

“ _I’m_ the problem,” he says, as though it’s obvious. “Kun deserves better than people thinking he’s with me. As I said, he’s a _good_ person.”

“Well,” Irene says, sweet and nervous to be here, in the midst of Seulgi’s scene, “I think you all seem very nice,” and Seulgi laughs and drags her away to learn more names.

 


	7. chapter seven: everyone smiles

The party isn’t the worst Kun’s been to in the last six months, not by a long shot. The music isn’t too loud, the lighting isn’t too dim and Ten looks clear-eyed and happy - all big smiles and soft hands that absentmindedly brush his own as they hang out with the others - at least for the next couple of hours. Sometimes, when it's like this, Kun forgets that everything isn't perfect. Being with Ten feels like perfect, but it isn't perfect by a long shot, because _they_ aren't perfect. N o one is.

Despite it being a decent atmosphere, Kun’s distracted for most of the evening. He thinks about what Ten had said earlier and how he’d meant every word. He’d really meant it all - about being a problem, about not deserving Kun, about - what was it?  _ Tainting  _ him. How could he think that about himself?

Ten sits next to him, squashed up against his side and he’s trying to have a conversation with Taeyong who is sat on the other end of the couch. They giggle about something, and, really, it would be so much easier for Ten to slip past and sit with Taeyong instead of awkwardly trying to hear him over the music and chatter from here, but instead Ten wraps an arm around Kun’s waist and leans over his lap, his hair brushing Kun’s chin as he talks across his body.

Irene smiles at them as she and Seulgi pass them by to get more drinks from the kitchen, and Kun thinks he might be imagining it, but he’s sure that there’s a hint of sympathy in her eyes when she looks at him.

 

 

 

 

Ten goes outside to smoke with the girls and Kun is pulled into a debate bordering on an argument between Yuta, Sicheng and Lucas about whether Lucas should apply for a place at culinary college based solely on the fact that he has now mastered how to cook an egg three ways. Yuta says that this is unexpected and great progress and it might be a sign that he’s the next big name in international cuisine. Sicheng says that being able to cook an egg is just self-preservation. Lucas gets bored of the conversation and gestures to Kun that they should go and get another drink, to which Kun nods. He isn’t really listening, anyway, still thinking about the pure horror that had filled Ten’s face at the thought of someone misinterpreting their relationship. 

“I don’t even want to go to culinary college,” Lucas complains, taking two beers out of the fridge and chucking one across the room to Kun, who just manages to catch it. “I’m happy working at the LV store. The customers tip me so well, and you know why? Because I tell them the truth! If the shoes look good, they look good, you know? If the dress doesn’t flatter their figure, it just doesn’t. I mean, I’ll still tell them they’re beautiful, regardless, but I won’t let them buy the dress.”

“People admire honesty in their sales advisors.” Kun takes a drink. He likes Lucas. Lucas is a little bit loud and he drinks too much, like most people they know, but he doesn’t bullshit.

“Exactly. Plus, I exaggerated a little about the eggs. I can’t even manage to cook scrambled egg yet.” He frowns, but then he laughs at himself and Kun laughs too.

“I can show you,” he says. “Hey– Lucas, do you think Ten is okay?”

“Ten?” Lucas looks blank for a moment, blindsided by Kun’s question, but he recovers quickly, purses his lips together and then takes another drink. “I think Ten’s, like, really cool. But he always has very sad eyes.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I know. He’s–– he’s vulnerable.” Kun nods. “He doesn’t like to show it.”

“That’s the thing about this whole scene,” Lucas says, pulling a face. “Everyone is just hiding behind what they think others want to see of them.”

And it’s funny, Kun thinks, how aware everyone is of their own pretence and yet none of them can give it up. Kun wonders how many of the people at this party would be at home right now if they weren’t so scared to be. Kun is certainly scared - scared to lose Ten, scared to miss out on Ten, to be someone without him. He’s no better than the rest of them, he knows that perfectly well.

Lucas leans against the fridge. “Why do you ask?”

“I’m just trying out this new honesty thing. You seem good at it.” Kun smiles: wry, sad. It’s been a weird night so far - the party might be alright, but it doesn’t take away from the growing ache in his chest. He needs to find Ten and talk to him.

“Thanks.” Lucas grins widely as Kun turns to leave the kitchen. “That’s actually a really cool compliment.”

Kun lifts his beer to that and Lucas spills his own down his jeans and then laughs happily at himself again.

 

 

 

 

 

Ten is still out on the balcony when Kun finds him, leaning on the railing by himself. He smiles brightly when he sees Kun. Says, “Hi handsome," in a voice that's sweet and warming.

Seeing Ten, the city shimmering with white lights behind him, makes Kun feel like he's staring into the sun; blinded and bathed in beautiful heat, with no going back. Sometimes Kun wonders whether he'd have a whole different definition of beautiful if he'd never met Ten. Ten is on a whole other level of exquisite and not just when he's dressed up in eyeshadow and collar-bone showing slinky blouses like the one he wears tonight. He's beautiful when he's wearing Kun's old uni hoodie, dark circles under his eyes, hair messy and eyes bloodshot. He's beautiful eating leftover takeout in leopard print leggings and a t-shirt he stole from his mom when he was eighteen. Kun doesn't want to admit it, feels shameful to think of it, but Ten is even beautiful when he's staring into nothing, his belly filled with liquor and pills. Devastating, definitely, but beautiful, still always beautiful. It makes Kun want to cry.

“Handsome? Is someone behind me?” Kun pretends to look around.

Ten rolls his eyes and smiles at him. “You’re not funny,” he says. 

Kun looks out over the city that frames Ten like a painted backdrop. There’s a cool breeze in the air that makes him feel awfully sober. He takes a breath, “About what you said earlier…”

“No.” Ten shakes his head. His smile falters a little at the edges. “Let’s not talk now.”

“Ten…”

“Let’s talk later! Tomorrow!” Ten’s eyes light up, desperation evident in them, and Kun feels like he’s been caught in a trap that he’ll never escape. Ten nods at him. “We’ll go for brunch just like you said, and we can talk about whatever you want to.”

Kun wants desperately to believe that the conversation will materialise - that he and Ten will spend the next morning together, awake. That they'll see the sun, they'll sip mimosas and eat the softest, most fluffy pancakes, and they'll be honest and open - both of them - and it'll be a _ good _ thing. “We will?”

“Yes.”

And Kun really, truly, almost believes him, but then Ten goes home with someone else.

“Johnny,” Taeyong tells him, wobbly on his feet. He looks tired. “He left with Johnny, I thought he'd told you before they headed out.”

“Johnny?”

“You know, the super tall guy Seulgi introduced us to. The DJ from Understated,” Taeyong reminds him and Kun feels bad for interrupting him, a hand on the elbow gently as he'd passed him near the door. Taeyong's expression had read,  _ please don't spoil my fun,  _ and Kun didn't want to spoil anything for anyone, but Ten had gone to the bathroom twenty minutes ago and hadn't appeared again and - yes, Ten is flighty and he's friends with everyone, but he usually makes sure he's  _ somewhere _ in Kun's peripheral. It's been an unspoken rule between them since they met - neither of them would ever dream of leaving somewhere without telling the other. 

("Isn't this nice?" Ten had whispered once, falling asleep against Kun's shoulder in Kun's bed. "It's so nice that the last thing I get to see before I fall asleep tonight is you.")

Kun double checks with Sicheng, who gives him a small shrug. “Yeah, I think they left." He's doing that know-it-all thing with his eyes again. He says, not unkindly, "They were inevitably going to hook up, Johnny has friends in high places and high places are Ten’s favourite.”

“High places?” Kun repeats. “What do you mean by that?”

Sicheng waves a hand at him, clearly regretting his words if his painful expression is anything to go by. “Oh, it’s just a phrase, Kun.”

“Sicheng...”

He sighs. “You know, people who’ll supply him with pills,” and even though - deep down - Kun  _ knows _ this, his heart still lurches at hearing the words.

  

 

 

 

Kun isn’t naive, or he didn’t  _ think _ he was, until he found himself in Ten’s world. Since then he’s been torn between what he thought about people like Ten (smiles, fun, shallow) and what he now knows to be true (loss, hope, clinging onto things that hurt).

After the first time they’d met, Kun was easily persuaded to go out with Sicheng’s friends again. He didn’t ask about Ten, but he did look out for him - furtive glances that turned to obvious longing. Ten was there, on the dance-floor, in his own little universe, and when Kun had spotted him he’d looked over and stared straight into the deep, deep chasm of Kun’s soul. Or that’s how it had felt - he’d been a little drunk, a little lightheaded. Maybe it hadn’t really been as intense as that, but it had felt like it.

The intensity has never subsided. He feels it in his chest every single day they’re together. He feels the pull, the drag of gravity on his pathetic human body, pulling him into Ten’s world, Ten’s eyes, Ten’s everything. He can’t imagine not seeing Ten every weekend. He can’t imagine a morning that the first thing on his mind isn’t a flash of white teeth and black hair and eyes filled with warmth. 

Ten said to him, once, “It’s such a shame that we met.”

Kun, who was serving up a hangover breakfast at a little after two in the afternoon, had looked up from the pan of potato hash, onions and peppers, a piercing pain to his chest. “What?”

Ten had smiled at him, coffee mug between his hands, t-shirt sliding off his shoulder as he leant over the kitchen counter. “Because now I know perfection and nothing else will ever hold close to it.”

Ten’s gaze had set on where he was placing a heap of home-fries next to the fried eggs on the plates in front of them. “Are you talking about my cooking?” Kun had asked, trying not to laugh and failing.

“Maybe.” Ten had reached out and picked up a fork, stealing a mouthful right off the plate with a cheeky grin. “Maybe not.”

Kun understood the sentiment then, and he definitely understands it now.

 

 

 

 

It feels strange, waking up with enough room in his bed to stretch out his arms and legs. He rolls over and stares at the wall, where Ten would usually be snuggled close at his side. He has a  _ side _ now - a place where he belongs, a place he’s meant to be, at least Kun thinks so. 

Kun has a fair idea of why he disappeared the night before and he can’t help but feel like it’s his fault. He’d pushed too much - wanted to talk, wanted to ruminate on feelings that Ten can’t stand to think about in the cold light of day. He’d said brunch but brunch was a euphemism for painful conversation, and Ten, Kun has come to realise, will do just about anything to hide from that.

He texts him just after eleven. Texts, “Did you get home okay? x” and Ten replies twenty minutes later with a smiling emoji. Texts, “Stayed at another friend’s place,” as if that’s normal, as if he  _ does  _ that.

Ten sends him six kisses, all in a row, in a separate message a few minutes later, and Kun spends all day wondering what that means, if anything.

  
  


 


	8. chapter eight: drift past the flowers

Kun is preparing his lunches for the work week ahead when Ten calls him on Sunday morning. Kun scrambles to pick up his phone before Ten hangs up. He slides it between his ear and his shoulder and holds it in place carefully while he continues to chop vegetables. "Hey."

"Hey you." Ten sounds far away, as though he's on another planet somewhere, or in another time, except he's just in someone else's apartment. "Did you have fun last night? I'm sorry I missed brunch this morning, I meant to come meet you!"

It's such a bad lie, such a bad lie that it makes Kun ache all over. He loves Ten so much and Ten hates himself and Kun has never felt less sure of how to make anything right.

He dries his hands on a towel and holds the phone properly against his ear, leaning against the kitchen counter, meal-prep forgotten. "You were never going to have brunch with me, we both know that," he says. He bites the inside of his cheek.

"No, I was going to, but I just..." Ten pauses, voice quiet when he says, "I'm just a shit person."

"You're not," Kun closes his eyes. "I was too hungover to eat brunch anyway. I'm still in bed with a headache now."

Whether he believes Kun's lie or not isn't important to Kun. What's important is that he doesn't let guilty feelings eat him up over one missed breakfast that Kun regrets ever suggesting.

"Me too. Maybe we'll do it next weekend instead," Ten says, but his words lack intent. There's noise behind him on the line, someone shouting his name in the background and Kun guesses he's still with Johnny. It makes him feel tense, bothers him in a way he knows means he's jealous, and he doesn't want to be that person, he really doesn't. Ten doesn't need that sort of person - jealous, acidic, weak - in his life.

"Sure," Kun replies. Neither of them mention the person in the background of the call, though they both heard them. "Drink lots of water today, okay? 

"I will." Ten sounds relieved. "I promise you." 

Kun says, "Good. And Ten?"

"Yes?"

"You don't taint people, Ten." He needs him to hear it, even if it's not face to face. "Believe me."

Ten is quiet for a while, breathing softly, silent. "I have to go now Kun," he says finally, and then he's gone.

 

 

 

 

 

They text as usual throughout the week and they don't mention the weekend again.

Ten texts Kun an offhand comment about Taeyong’s birthday coming up next month and then sends Kun a selfie Ten takes in a coffee shop on Tuesday afternoon. They have a fifteen minute conversation as Kun grabs a sandwich at lunchtime in the office kitchen on Thursday, texting back and forth about whether Kun remembers seeing Ten’s red snakeprint ankle boots around his apartment or not (he hasn’t) and whether he should dye his hair red again (Kun texts, _it's entirely up to you :) x_ ).

On Saturday, Kun wakes up around seven thirty, just in time to catch the sun rising as he heads out for coffee and fresh bread. His favourite bakers opens at eight and he waits outside with a take-out cappuccino (with an extra shot), checking the news on his phone.

He checks out instagram next. There are six new stories on Ten's feed, clips of loud music and flashing lights taken in the middle of a dance floor the night before. Kun recognises the decor behind Taeyong's head in the second video– they're at Understated, which is no surprise to him. It's become their regular haunt. Still, he finds it kind of weird that Ten didn't tell him they were going to be out downtown after he'd finished work, he usually calls Kun after a couple of vodka tonics and suggests he meet them out somewhere, always saying "Come see me if you aren't too busy!" as if he would ever refuse.

Kun is never busy. At least, he is never too busy for Ten. That's kind of a given by now, and Kun thinks that Ten probably knows that deep down, but he still asks every single time. Except not this time, apparently, because Kun had fallen asleep on the sofa a little after midnight and then had woken up again at one to Netflix showing him the Are you still watching? screen. He'd cursed at the screen and checked his phone, briefly, but there were no messages - no texts, no voicemails, no missed calls, so he'd assumed Ten was working an event late and had taken himself to bed, blowing out Ten's favourite candle on his way to his room.

(He's started lighting Ten's candles a lot lately. Most days in fact. It's becoming more and more apparent that he needs to feel like Ten is there in his apartment even when he isn't, and he puts it down to home comforts and habit, and ignores the fact that it's less about liking the smell of rosewood and lilac, and more about liking anything that ties him to Ten.)

Kun buys a loaf of rye and sunflower bread and two danish pastries - one raspberry (for him) and one creme (for Ten). He expects Ten to turn up at his around midday, hungover and sleepy, and to crawl into his lap and sleep soundly against his chest until dinner time, when he'll pick at his danish until Kun gives in and hand feeds him like he's a baby bird, which Ten thinks is hilariously cute and Kun pretends to find incredibly annoying, but shares his sentiment deep down.

Until Ten arrives, Kun potters around the apartment, tidying a few bits and pieces and cleaning down his kitchen worktop, while an old season of Top Chef plays in the background, and then he settles on the sofa and lets the season continue until he's starting episode five and now it's after three in the afternoon and Ten hasn't even so much as texted him.

Kun starts to feel worried - more worried than usual - and he has visions of Ten alone, blacked out, or blacked out and _not_ alone, and his stomach churns and Ten doesn't answer his calls, and Kun checks when he was last active on instagram, which feels a bit invasive but it's only because he's scared, and when he realises Ten commented fourteen queen emojis in a row on a photo of Seulgi in thigh high boots and come to bed eyes (captioned 'photo by irene') less than forty minutes ago, relief floods his bloodstream in one long wave: Ten’s okay.

Ten’s okay, he’s just not coming over this weekend for the first time in months. Kun wonders if Ten’s avoiding him and it scares him how much it hurts to think about.

 _Did you call me earlier?_   Ten texts him a little while later and - out of pettiness or jealousy or something else entirely, Kun isn't sure - Kun just texts back, _It was an accident, sorry._

Ten replies with three smile emojis, and Kun waits, watches the text bubble in the chat as Ten types something else. But in the end, after five minutes of waiting, the text bubble disappears and Kun feels dumb for lying, but most of all he feels alone.

 

 

 

 

 

“If you come to mine on Sunday we can get the train over to my mom’s place. I haven’t seen Xuiying in forever.” Sicheng’s voice is crackly on the line. “She’s nearly four now.”

“She can’t be.” Kun runs a hand over his face. He can hardly believe how long it’s been since he’s spent quality time with his family, or the fact that Sicheng's been an uncle for almost 4 years now. “Yeah, yeah I should come too. What time are you going?”

“Come over to mine any time after ten thirty and we can get the train up there together.” Sicheng says. "That way we'll be there in time for lunch."

When Kun hangs up he thinks, with a pang of guilt, about his own mama and about how long it's been since he spent a full weekend with his parents. He hasn’t seen his other cousins in months. He doesn't even really see Sicheng that often now outside of parties where the conversation rarely turns to how their parents are or whether their grandmother's health is any better. His mind is usually on Ten, anyway.

(It's on Ten for the rest of the day.)

When Kun arrives at Sicheng's building on Sunday, his cousin opens the door with a panicked expression. “You’re early.”

"I’m only three minutes early." Kun can't understand the issue. It's just about ten and he's always on time for things. "Is something––”

“I said to come over at ten _thirty_.” Sicheng breathes out of his nose and twists his mouth up in annoyance. “Can you just come back in half an hour?”

Kun can't help but laugh at the nervous way his cousin is now hell-bent on closing the door on him slowly, as if he doesn't want Kun to see something. Or, maybe, some _one_. “Do you have someone over?”

“No.” Sicheng huffs He pauses for a moment, before he sighs and opens the door again. “Okay, fine, yes I am sleeping with Yuta and _no_ you’re not allowed to say anything about it.”

Kun pauses to take this in and finds that he isn't even surprised. He's seen weirder relationships spring up around him. Nothing much surprises him anymore, and, anyway, Yuta's always made it clear that he thinks that Sicheng is some sort of god-given saviour of the party scene in this city. “Noted.”

Sicheng gives up on trying to close the door and lets Kun into the hallway. “Don’t look him in the eye or he will try to tell you in length about some band he thinks he discovered this week even though they’re already signed," he warns. Adds a little louder, “You _can’t_ discover a signed band. Someone has already discovered them and _signed_ them.”

“They’re only a little bit signed! "Yuta calls from somewhere in the apartment, Kun presumes from Sicheng’s bedroom. He appears a moment later in the doorway, half dressed. "Hey, we haven’t seen you out for a couple of weeks,” he says. It isn’t a question, but Kun feels the need to justify his absence anyway.

“I’ve been busy. I’m sure I’m not missed, anyway. Boring old Kun.”

“Don’t be so sure about that, people definitely miss you.” Yuta looks straight at him and adds, "I can tell because their smiles aren't so genuine, I was just telling–."

"That's enough, you can go home now." Sicheng shoots Yuta a very pointed look and Kun realises they must have been talking about him and Ten before he arrived.  _Him and Ten_ , as if they're one entity. As if they come as a pair. Except they don't, not right now at least. Kun shoves his hands into his jacket pockets and shrugs.

 

 

 

 

It takes Sicheng twenty minutes to get Yuta out of the front door and Kun flicks through TV channels while he waits. Finally, Sicheng appears with a harassed smile and says, "ready?" as if it was Kun who'd been holding them up the whole time, which Kun finds kind of funny.

As they ride the train to Sicheng’s family home, Kun watches the raindrops run down the window next to him and thinks of Ten in a taxi with haunted eyes.

“Are you avoiding Ten?” Sicheng asks him from the seat opposite.  

Kun looks away from the window. He can't help but sound offended when he says, “No, of course I'm not.” He thinks about pretending he'd called Ten by accident the week before and feels ashamed of himself. 

“Is he avoiding _you_ , then?”

"I think... Maybe. I don't know." Kun isn’t sure what's happening anymore. He’d wondered, the weekend before, if Ten was punishing him for pushing too far with trying to make him talk about everything. But he knows better than that; Ten isn’t mean, he doesn't punish anyone but himself. He’s just lost. “I asked if we could talk and he didn’t want to, and now... Honestly, if he's avoiding anyone, I think he's avoiding _himself_."

“He seemed okay on Friday when we were out for drinks.”  Sicheng fiddles with the cuff of his jacket. “But you can never really tell with him. He won’t let you look him in the eye for long enough to really get a gage on how he feels.”

“Hmm.” Kun looks back out of the window. He understands the sentiment, but it's not the same for him. Ten looks him in the eyes, Ten lets him see the desolation, the sadness, the tiny flicker of hope. He asks, voice thick with something he doesn't recognise, “Was Johnny there?”

He can feel Sicheng’s gaze on the side of his face, judging him, even if it’s not intentional. Kun judges himself for this, afterall. Jealousy is a bitter, bitter pill and it’s ugly and it’s childish, but he feels it all the same.

“He was there,” Sicheng replies. “He’s not a bad guy, you know.”

And this, _this_ is the problem, Kun knows. Because there’s no villain and there’s no hero in this city, there are just a million lost souls surviving in the only flawed ways they know how to, turned and twisted and only just getting by. And Ten is one of them, and Johnny is one, and Sicheng and Yuta and Taeyong, they’re all the same. Him too.

Kun slides his finger over the window, tracing the trails left by the rain. “I’m looking forward to dinner,” he says to fill the silence he has left in the conversation. “I hope Aunty will let me help with the cooking.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

The next week goes by much the same as the one before it. Kun busies himself in his work; he has an appraisal due in two weeks and he has been angling for promotion for months now, so he perfects his monthly report and makes sure he clocks out after seven Tuesday through Thursday to show his dedication to the company.

That it also helps distract him from thoughts of Ten is just an added bonus, he tells himself, but he’s lying as usual, because, really, it’s the only thing that matters to him at all.

At lunchtime on Friday, Kun finds himself in line for coffee in front of an old friend from college, who taps him on the shoulder, looks at him with a confused kind of expression and says, “Qian Kun?”

“Have I changed that much?” Kun laughs.

Taeil smiles and shrugs. Says, “Not really, but you might have a doppelganger.”

“Well, I don't. Not that I know of.” Kun raises an eyebrow and grins. He finds it a funny thought - thinks it would be more likely that _he’s_ the identical stranger now, a whole different man to the one Taeil knew a few years ago. The old Kun wouldn’t be struggling to breathe every time he thinks of a certain someone. He’d be under control calm and ready,  _he’d_ know what to do to fix everything.

Kun doesn’t know how to fix anything at all now.

Taeil pays for his coffee and it's a kind gesture that Kun genuinely appreciates. They walk together for a while, and talk about where they work, where they live, how they are. Taeil asks, “Do you have a cat and a husband yet?” because that was the joke, the running joke all through college - that Kun wanted to settle down faster than anyone else, that Kun was destined for a life of domestic bliss by the time he turned twenty five, and it had only been a joke, but part of him had _believed_ it.

Kun shakes his head. “Not yet,” he says. “You?”

“I’m engaged,” Taeil says. He gestures to his empty ring-finger. “We didn’t get rings, it wasn’t very dramatic and It’ll be a small ceremony, boring, by all accounts. A meal, some vows, a few drinks.”

Kun looks at him. He wants to say, “that sounds nice,” because it does, but instead he says, “I love someone but it’s... It’s all fucked up.”

Taeil looks back at him, his coffee cup awkwardly poised halfway to his mouth. “Is it me?” He asks.

“No!” Kun laughs, and Taeil laughs too. Says, “Phew,” and continues drinking his coffee. 

It feels good to laugh again after so long. He’s missed Taeil, he’s missed honest conversation, the type he struggles so much with now. It feels like a warm ray of light inside of him. “No, it’s not you. You don't know him, but he's...He's perfect. And he can't see it. No matter what, he doesn't see it." He stops, embarrassed. "Sorry, we should be talking about your wedding."

"Oh, no. I talk about my wedding all the time." Taeil throws his coffee cup in the trash can they walk past it. "I hope things work out between you."

"I just... I just want him to be okay." Kun gives Taeil a small smile. "That's all."

Kun doesn't work late that night.


	9. chapter nine: on the shore

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> just fyi i've bumped the rating up.  
> <3

 

 

Kun wakes up to the sound of buzzing, that he realises as he blinks into the disorientating darkness, is his phone ringing on vibrate. The name that shows on the screen when he checks his phone sends a jolt of panic through him.

“Hey. Are you OK?” he asks Ten.  It’s the middle of the night and maybe it’s just because he’s usually out too, but Kun hasn’t been woken up by a phone-call in years. Texts, maybe. But a call is usually something more serious. “Ten?”

Ten’s voice is soft and far away. He sounds like a dream. “Where are you?"

Kun sits up, pushes the pillows up behind him to rolls his shoulders to ease them. “I’m in bed.”

Ten laughs, his voice like a chime in the wind on a breezy day. He’s high, Kun can tell. “Why are you in bed?”

“Because it’s the middle of the night. Are you okay, Ten?” He tries not to sound too worried, too frustrated. He hopes he manages. “Why are you calling me?”

“I miss you,” Ten says, matter of fact, honest. Kun’s stomach flutters; he hadn’t realised how much he craved the sound of Ten’s voice, but damn does he miss it. 

“I miss you too,” he admits, and maybe Ten hears him or maybe he doesn’t, it hardly matters, because the Ten on the end of the phone will be gone in the morning and a lot of half-baked memories will be gone along with him. Ten probably won’t remember this call. 

“Where are you?” Ten asks him after a moment. He sounds happy, voice soft and light, like he’s floating. “Are you out tonight?”

“No, I’m in bed,” Kun repeats, his heart sinking. “Ten, you’re not alone, are you? Who are you with?”

“Alone? No, no, they’re all here,” Ten says. “I see– I see Seulgi. I see Taeyongie. Yuta’s… No, he’s not here tonight. And Johnny! Johnny’s at the bar getting me a vodka soda with no lime.”

“Johnny will make sure you get home safely, won’t he? Ten?” Kun waits for the airy tone of Ten’s response, but he gets nothing, just background noise that he can’t quite make out. “Ten? Are you still there?”

“Hmm? I’m here.” Ten’s quieter, now. “Why aren’t you here?”

“I’m just not,” Kun says, even if it’s a white lie. He’s not there because Ten hasn’t turned up at his place and talked him into it. Ten’s not been over in weeks. “Do you… Do you need me to come and get you?”

“I’m okay. I’m getting a vodka soda with no lime - I specified that, he better remember - and I’m going to dance until I feel like I don’t exist anymore.” Ten laughs, then. Adds, “No one has eyes like you, you know that? No one else sees me.” And Kun doesn’t know what he means; it could mean anything. It could mean nothing. 

(It definitely means something.)

Kun misses him so much that he can almost feel the raw beginnings of an angry sob bubbling inside him. He’s exhausted - work has been busy with the big project coming up and he’s been hanging out with Taeil too, but it’s not physical exhaustion that Kun feels, not really. Without Ten’s presence in his life (his energy, the love he exudes to those around him, just him) Kun is emotionally drained to the core. Still, no one is to blame and Kun would never try to force his way back into Ten’s life: he knows that he isn’t Ten’s self appointed guardian angel. He’s not even his _boyfriend_ , even if other people think he is. He respects the space that Ten’s put between them, even if it’s so fucking painful it’s stupid.

Kun runs a hand through his hair. “Just… Stay safe. Please stay safe. Can you do that, Ten?"

“I don’t know,” Ten replies. There is noise behind him again: shrieks of laughter, someone calling a name. The music gets louder and then the line cuts off, leaving Kun alone. He doesn’t get back to sleep for a long time.

 

  
  
  
  
  


A string quartet is playing at the other end of the restaurant, where the bartender is standing at the bar and cleaning champagne flutes until they gleam. Kun kind of wishes he had that skill; his glass is never as shiny as he wishes it could be. “This place is really nice," he says, as he cuts into his plate of scallops with lemon zest and butter. "Not pretentious, not too fancy, but very classy.”

“Kind of perfect for a low-key wedding dinner, don’t you think?” Taeil smiles. “I think I’m going to give this place eight out of ten - it loses points for the lack of natural lighting near the bar. I want to look amazing in the wedding photos.”

Kun laughs. “Actually, I'm pretty sure there are french doors near the bar area that are curtained over today, so you might want to rethink that score."

Taeil makes an "ah" face and scribbles out the note he's just written in his planner. “Even better, I’ll change it to a nine. Thanks for doing this with me.”

“Thanks for taking me to lunch in the name of research," Kun says. It's been sweet of Taeil to invite him out to try potential wedding dinner venues with him. When Taeil had first suggested it, he’d claimed it was just because it was convenient - their offices aren't too far apart and they keep the similar schedules, Taeil had said, plus he'd appreciate the company, but Kun guesses there's an underlying amount of pity there, which is understandable. "I'm glad I can help you out."

Taeil takes photos of the wine list and the table settings with his phone. Says, “Have you spoken to Ten yet this week?"

Kun reaches for his glass of wine and takes a sip, and then another. "He called me at the weekend, in the middle of the night, actually. He was drunk. He sounded sad."

"What did he say?" Taeil asks. 

The wine is sharp-tasting at the back of his throat. "He said he missed me," Kun says. “And then he disappeared.” His voice sounds sharp too.

Taeil gives him a condoling smile. The string quartet keep playing behind them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's Yuta who sends him the address and that's all he texts - no explanation, just the address of a new bar downtown and one dancing emoji.

Kun calls Sicheng straight away and asks, "Have you put him up to this?"

"No, I have better things to do.” Sicheng scoffs. “Look, you and Ten can avoid each other as long as you like. You'll find your way back in the end."

Kun hums.

"But Ten _will_ be there tonight. We'll all be there. And, weirdly enough, you're one of us and it’s kind of weird not seeing you around."

"Am I though?” Kun muses. He’s never been sure. “Am I one of you?"

"Kun, you're not some noble outsider,” Sicheng says, and he isn’t being rude, just truthful in that acidic way family can be. “You don’t actually think you’re better than us, I know you don’t.”

Kun knows that Sicheng is right. Just because he doesn't drink as much as some of them, or take strangers home in a regular rotation. Just because he has never accepted pretty pills off of pretty strangers, it doesn't make him different at all. Everyone’s addicted to something, or someone, sometimes both. Everyone’s just clinging on to hope, he knows that.

"Sorry. I know that. I know.” Kun sighs. “I'm just... I’m scared of losing him.”

"Tell him that, then," Sicheng says, more kindly. There’s shuffling in the background of the call and Sicheng adds, “Yuta is saying something about Ten’s smile being fake again. I don’t know what he means.”

Kun does, though. “I’ll think about it, then. I might come out to the club,” he says, but he already knows for sure that he’s going to end up there. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Kun!” Ten wraps his arms tightly around his neck as soon as he sees him. He’s already a little drunk, Kun can smell sweet liqueur on his breath as he hugs him close. “You came out! I’m so happy. I’m happy now... You haven't come out partying in ages.”

Kun hugs him back. He can’t help but feel relief - relief that Ten is still the same, relief that time apart hasn’t changed things, relief that Ten is right there in front of him. “You haven’t come over  to mine in a while either,” he says, but he feels bad for it when Ten grimaces. 

“I wasn’t… I wasn’t going to be good company.” Ten pulls a face and laughs softly. “Not that I ever am, but especially then. And then… Then you seemed busy, so I thought I’d leave you be.”

“I’m always busy,” Kun says. “But you know I’d never be too busy for you, right? If you needed me, I’d be there.”

Ten says, “You’re too good,” and traces the lines on Kun’s palm with his finger.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

The night is like any other, which doesn’t surprise Kun. Lucas arrives a little after eleven with Xiaojun and Hendery in tow, who Kun vaguely remembers meeting, and he spills beer over Hendery’s white trousers within eight minutes of arriving. Kun sits around a tall table, talks to Sicheng, and Yuta and sometimes to Jaehyun, who slips in and out of the entrance, disappearing off to smoke every fifteen minutes. Kun drinks beer and then vodka sodas, and as the strobe lights slide over the crowd, he sees Ten dancing with Taeyong and Johnny, his movements graceful, as though they’re happening in slow motion. He’s mesmerised as usual.

Ten waves at him from the dancefloor, sways his hips and closes his eyes. Kun ignores Yuta trying to crawl inside Sicheng’s mouth, or at least that’s what it looks like, accepts a cigarette from Jaehyun and spends some time outside in the cool air pretending that an image of Johnny dancing up close to Ten isn’t seared into his eyelids. 

“Can we go?” Ten appears at his side, pouting a little. He steals a drag from Jaehyun’s cigarette. “I’m bored now.” 

“What about Johnny?” Kun asks.

“What about him?” Ten looks around. “I haven’t seen him for hours, he might have already gone.”

Kun contemplates this. “Aren’t you like… With him?”

“Nope.” Ten takes his arm. “Can you make us French toast in the morning? Come on. Bye Jaehyun!” He tugs at Kun’s arm until he falls into step beside him. 

Ten dances, spinning circles under street lamps as they make the walk through downtown and back to Kun’s apartment. He takes Kun’s hand and holds his arm in the air, ducking underneath it and twirling. He stumbles as he goes, but pulls it off every time, and Kun could swear he’s travelled back in time to when this all began, back when he first fell so deeply in love that he just knows he’ll never fall out of it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

When they make it back to Kun’s place, Ten peers inside his kitchen cupboards. 

Kun laughs. “Are you looking for food?”

“No. Just wondered if anything had changed since I was last here.” Ten looks at him. “What’s his name? I’m _very_ jealous but I’m going to be so nice to him. Or her? Could it be a girl? No, right?” 

“What?” Kun frowns. Ten leaves the kitchen, sheds his leather jacket on the way down the hall. 

“That’s why you disappeared, right? You’re dating someone? I hope he’s handsome like you are..” Kun follows him towards the bedroom. “I hope he’s successful and confident, and kind. A whole person.”

“Ten.”

He stops before the foot of the bed and turns back around so quickly that Kun almost stumbles backwards in surprise. “Does he make you happy?” Ten asks, head cocked to the side, eyes unreadable. 

“I’m not– I’m not dating anyone,” Kun says.

“Oh.” Ten stops. “I thought…Your instagram stories. That string quartet. I thought that was... “

“That was lunch with a college friend. I’m not dating.” Kun feels nervous. He doesn’t know what he wants Ten to say to that.

Ten says, “That’s good.” 

“It is?”

“I don’t mean it like you don’t deserve to be dating. I want you to be happy, I want you to be loved and happy. It’s not _good_. It’s just…” Ten sighs as he sits down on the bed. “I can’t explain, not in a way that makes me sound like anything but selfish. That’s what I am, selfish and empty, and using your company to make me feel real, like I might be a person and not a black hole.”

"Don't say that. Can I say something?” Kun sits down next to him. He takes a breath. “Can I tell you what I see when I look at you?"

Ten looks down. "Sometimes I wish you could see nothing when you looked at me. That you could look straight through me to the other side, and not see me at all. I think it would be better all round."

"No, Ten.” Kun just wants Ten to understand. He wants Ten to like himself the way Kun does. Why can’t he like himself? “You're a good person. You're the _best_ person, you..."

"No." Ten shakes his head. “I’m not. Don’t say it.”

“But–”

“No.” Ten presses a finger to Kun’s lips. “Shhh.”

Kun doesn’t move. Or maybe he does, maybe an inch, but then Ten is there, closer, and then his finger is gone and it’s replaced with his lips.

When Ten kisses him it’s with the sort of sheer and unrelenting desperation that Kun knows oh so well, but _this_ is not familiar, this is a new way of running away. This is art, it’s a masterpiece– the best way of avoiding real life that Kun has ever experienced. It’s also terrible and it hurts, and he wants to stop kissing Ten back because this isn’t how it should be. This isn’t relationship progression, even if it’s everything he wants. This is a _regression._

This isn’t almost a year of love, this is fucking for the sake of avoiding difficult conversations, and Kun knows it, but he can’t stop it from happening. Because sure, spilling out his heart might be what he needs to do, but Ten’s hands on his body is what he wants, deep down, at a base sort of level. It’s _everything_. 

“We shouldn’t,” Kun says. He closes his eyes, pulls back to catch his breath. His shirt’s open, half pushed down off over his shoulders. Ten pushes him back and climbs over him, straddles his lap with a determination in his eyes that roots Kun to the spot as though he’s stunned. 

“Don’t you want to?” Ten asks. him “Because I want to, I really want to.”

Then he grinds down against Kun’s lap to stress his point. He’s hard, Kun can feel  it, and it feels amazing as much as it feels like a bad decision. Kun opens his mouth, and then closes it again and his brain short circuits and Ten kisses his neck, sucks hard on skin all the while he keeps grinding, keeps pushing the shirt from Kun’s shoulders. “I do, but- this is… _Oh_. Maybe it’s a bad idea. Maybe we should talk.”

Ten moves so he can unbutton his jeans. He pulls them down, rolling off of Kun’s lap to pull them all the way off his legs. He kicks them off the edge of the bed and Kun watches his legs, dancers legs, strong and capable and tanned, move against the white sheets on his bed.

Ten says, “I want you to fuck me. I don’t want to talk, I want to fuck.” He presses himself against Kun’s body, buries his face into Kun’s shoulder, and licks at the sensitive skin he’s just sucked bruises against. Ten’s body is hot and it’s moving against him, and Kun is losing himself in how many times he’s thought about this.

Kun has always prided himself on being level headed, on being thoughtful, of being the one who makes the right choices as much as he can, who makes the choices that are best for _everyone_ involved, and he’s here, tonight, on the precipice of a pivotal decision.  But he’s also drunk, and he’s so turned on, his cock straining against his jeans as Ten’s hands find his zipper. 

He’s in love with Ten and Ten is looking at him with such intensity that it might set him on fire, 

Kun says, “I want to,” and then Ten smiles so widely and so beautifully at him that, for a moment, Kun can’t comprehend how this could be anything but the best idea of their entire lives. Ten leans down over him, takes Kun’s cock in his hand as his mouth follows. He licks a wet stripe along the underside and Kun dies. He licks around the head and Kun comes back to life, and then he hollows his cheeks and takes him all the way into his mouth, his t-shirt riding up over his back as he bobs his head, and Kun dies again.

When Ten pulls away, he drags his t-shirt over his head and wriggles out of his underwear, until he’s completely naked then and he’s lying down and he’s waiting for Kun to catch up with him.

He watches Kun undress fully from behind mascara-thick eyelashes. His eyes are kohl-rimmed; the left eye is smudged, the right is perfectly lined. It isn’t on purpose. Kun bites back a smile. “You look… “

“Impatient?”

“Beautiful.” Kun reaches out and brushes the hair from Ten’s forehead with one hand, tracing the shape of his hip gently with the other. Underneath him, Ten makes a noise that Kun has never heard before and his eyelids flutter shut, his hands fisting into the bedclothes underneath them.

“Want you to fill me up,” Ten whispers. “Please.”

And at the time - Kun’s brain spinning, the spiral of heat in his lower belly that coils tighter with every kiss making rational thought near impossible - it sounds erotic, it’s about the fit of their bodies and the way in which Kun  fumbles to get the lid off the lube and the way that he fucks two fingers into Ten over and over, until Ten is writhing underneath him, gasping for more. It’s about sex and it’s about desire and it’s about the way that Ten wraps his legs around Kun’s waist when he fucks into him and bites at his lip, and the way that Ten breathes his name as Kun comes inside him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Later, though, as Ten sleeps and Kun paces the bathroom, Kun’s mind fills up with everything that’s between them. He thinks about every tiny thing he knows about Ten, and all of the significant things that he knows Ten keeps hidden away. He thinks about Ten in the taxi cab, with the rain pouring in through the open window last month. 

Kun remembers the shattered look on Ten’s face when he’d said, “I’m just empty space.” When he’d told Kun, with certainty, that he was just a black hole, unfillable. 

“I want you to fill me up,” he’d half whispered earlier that night, and now Kun wants to scream because it doesn’t feel like it was about sex at all. 

Kun grips the side of the sink, looks into the mirror and breathes out. Ten isn’t okay, they both know it. Everything is slipping away from him, and now he can’t even say he’s only ever had Ten’s best interests at heart, because he still wants him so badly, wants to smell of him and hear his moans even now, even though he loves him enough to know this shouldn’t have happened. 

Kun tidies their clothes away from the end of the bed and places Ten’s phone on the nightstand for him. There’s a message on the screen in the notification centre, and Kun doesn’t mean to pry but it’s right there in front of him and it’s from an unknown number, and it says _hey man, we have a new batch of those pills you love if you wanna buy them. someone’ll be selling after nine tomorrow night so give us a call if you want some._

Kun kisses Ten’s forehead and wraps his arms around Ten’s sleeping form, and in the morning, when Kun wakes up, Ten’s no longer there.

 

  



	10. chapter ten: waiting

 

Kun stays in bed for hours, until lying down feels like it’s all he can do. He stares at the ceiling, dry mouth calling out for water, and listens to the sole noise he can: the beat of his heart in the eerie silence of his room. He runs through the night before in his head—like a play by play of his sweetest demise— but when he remembers the soft lines of Ten's body and the way he'd kissed as though he was trying to save Kun from drowning, something stirs inside of him that he can't distinguish. It's guilt and it's love and it's everything in between, and it hurts that Ten isn't here. It hurts that Ten was here and now he isn't, and it's his fault.

He’s never felt so alone in his entire life and he feels it physically, like there's a hole in his chest and a pain where his heart used to be, and he tries to go back to sleep but he can't.

Maybe, he thinks, he'll never truly sleep again, and he knows this is overdramatic and he _knows_ that he should just get out of bed, make a shit-ton of his favourite, full-bodied, Sunday morning blend coffee and accept that things have reached a new, confusing, level; the grey-area of their relationship murkier than it's ever been, even after fucking. It's just— it's _difficult_ , and lying very still is easier. So he lies still and quiet and tries to forget everything—the last night, the last month, year, all of it—until he drifts into a troubled sleep and dreams of tears that taste of salt and hands that are cold to the touch. 

He wakes up less than an hour later and curses his inability to sleep past midday. _Old habits die hard_ , he thinks. He knows that all too well by now.

 

 

 

 

The second time that Kun ever met Ten had been at a party Taeyong had thrown at his new place about three weeks after their first meeting. Sicheng had invited him, but, as Kun recalls, he never actually showed up to this one. Maybe, Kun realises as he thinks back on that night, this had been why the playlist had suddenly changed trajectory from indie party anthems to low-fi heartbreak songs around midnight. Yuta had been in control of the music, after all.

Taeyong's forwarded text message had said the party would start about 8pm, but when Kun arrived a little before 8.30, there were only three other people there. Yuta was hunched over a laptop, "putting together the playlist of the entie fucking year," as he’d so eloquently put it, and Taeyong was floating around like a luminous ball of energy, humming to himself and swigging from a bottle. He'd waved at Kun as he'd passed him by and had said, "Ten's here somewhere," as if he could read Kun's thoughts and knew Kun hadn’t stopped thinking about Ten even once for the last twenty days.

Ten was curled up on a leather chair in the corner in an oversized cardigan and glasses, and he'd stretched, feline and lazy, when Kun had approached. "You're early," he’d yawned, uncurling his tiny limbs and getting up. 

"I'm not." Kun had been confused. He was _not_ early. In fact, he was a few minutes later than the message said the party would start.

"You are." He'd smiled, then, so softly that Kun's hearted had melted right there on the spot. "No one shows up to these things until at least nine thirty. Except you, apparently."

"Except me.” Kun looked around. "Well, if there's anything someone needs me to pick up from the store I could go and make myself useful..."

"No, no. Don't leave." Ten had taken his hand, just like that, like it belonged there. "You can hang with me while I get ready. Come on, in here." 

He'd led him through the apartment, into a bedroom that Kun assumed was Taeyong's and shut the door behind them. 

“Don’t worry,” he’d grinned. “I’m not getting naked or anything. Not just yet. Here, pick a top for me to wear.” He’d pointed to the closet and looked at Kun expectantly. “Something sexy, okay?”

Kun had opened the closet carefully and stared into an abyss of black and sparkling metallics, all mixed up together like a night’s sky. “I’ll try,” he’d said, in a voice he didn’t recognise. Clearing his throat, he’d pulled a grey sweater thread with a charcoal coloured glitter. “What about–”

“It’s far too warm for a sweater.” Ten had shaken his head as he’d leaned over to watch himself in the mirror leant against the wall and messily lined his eyes with a blunt looking khol pencil. “I run naturally hot. Something else?” 

Kun felt out of his depth, like he’d fallen down a rabbit hole and ended up in tea party he was never invited to, which, when he thinks back, was pretty fitting considering the circumstances. “I can’t choose. I… I think you’d look good in anything.” He’d stepped away from the closet.

“Oh, I see. You’re after a blowjob.” Ten had snorted with laughter laced with distaste, but he'd finished his makeup perfectly.

“I'm sorry?” 

Ten’s smile had dropped then. With crestfallen features and panicked eyes he’d turned around. “Oh. _Oh._ You actually mean it? You’re not fucking with me? You’re just being nice?” 

Kun didn’t hide his embarrassment. “I just, I wanted to compliment you… I really don’t expect anything in return. I’m sorry if I gave that impression.” 

Ten considered this, had stared at Kun as though he was trying to figure him out. “You think I’d look good in anything and you just wanted to… tell me.”

Kun remembers how he’d cleared his throat, wishing he’d had something to drink before he’d arrived. “I really didn’t mean to come off sleazy.”

“You didn’t. I’m just… I’m not....” Ten had never finished that sentence. “Pass me the sweater you chose. It’s too warm but Taeyongie has scissors, maybe he wants it to be a crop top.” He’d opened the bedroom door and shouted, “Taeyong, can I cut one of your sweaters at the navel please? Kun chose it for me and there needs to be less of it.”

Kun can’t remember if Taeyong had given permission or not, just remembers Ten grinning as he cut away the excess fabric, and the way he’d then stripped himself of his own tshirt and had wriggled into the sweater, shaking his hair back into place. 

“Come on, let’s get some drinks. We’re still at this party way too early.” Ten had led Kun out of the room with a smile like spun sugar. “I hope you like tequila.”

Yuta had looked at them strangely, like he was trying to decide whether they’d been up to something in the bedroom, but then he’d gone back to perfecting his gloomy playlist, and Ten had poured out two drinks and said, “Don’t worry, Lucy and her friends will be here later and we can really lose ourselves.”

Kun had wondered who Lucy was and why her friends were so important, but he hadn’t thought to ask, and it hadn’t occurred to him until much later on, when Ten was spinning perfect circles in the centre of the living room, the modified sweater fraying where it stopped above his waist, that Lucy might not be a person at all. 

Ten had pressed a soft kiss to Kun’s cheek at around midnight. Had said, “If I fall asleep on your shoulder this time, just wake me up, okay?” 

But when it happened, Kun didn’t have the heart to wake him. Or the next time, or the time after that.

 

 

 

 

 

Sicheng is waiting outside Kun's building on Monday afternoon when he returns home from work. Kun isn’t exactly surprised about this visit since he _has_ been ignoring his cousin’s calls since this morning in favour of hammering out an entire fifteen page report on the recent development project in one day. 

His manager had praised his work ethic this afternoon, but it wasn’t passion for the project (or even his usual mid-afternoon booster coffee) that had fuelled him to go so hard, it was all just a desperate attempt to forget about everything else for six to seven hours. Still, his brain hadn’t co-operated, had forced thoughts of longing and desire and the heavy feeling of disappointment (in himself, in the empty bed yesterday morning, in the way that Ten had gone on to post instagram stories in a bar on the Eastside of town later that evening as if nothing new had happened in the eighteen hours before) to the forefront of his mind.

Even so, it had been easy enough to pretend to the outside world that he wasn't internally caving in, at least for a few hours.

Now, though, is different. Now Sicheng is tapping his foot and saying. “You’ve been ignoring me,” and he's got that all-knowing look on his face.

“How could I? I’ve been at work.”

"Ten spoke to Yuta," Sicheng says. There’s something in his voice that makes Kun worry about what’s about to be said next. "I take it that something might have happened?"

Kun agrees. "Something happened." 

He wonders what Ten has said, he wonders how Ten feels. He doesn’t even really know how _he_ feels, except for conflicted.

"He called Yuta at, like, three in the morning last night, he was drunk, I think. I mean, he clearly was on _something_ , whether he’d been drinking too I don’t know. He said that he'd been more selfish than ever before and something about taking love he doesn't deserve. Did you... Did you confess to him, did you tell him you love him?"

Kun shakes his head. "He already knows I love him. That's not... That's never even been up for discussion."

Sicheng twists his mouth up into a confused pout and Kun tries to put himself in Sicheng’s shoes; Kun knows he’s only trying to help. Still, it makes him feel like he’s being confronted.  "What happened, then?"

"I don't want to talk about it." Kun struggles to get his key-fob for the building out of his wallet. “I don’t think I can.” He’s never been a coward like this before, or maybe he’s always been a coward like this. That’s how he’s gotten himself here, to this place of purgatory with Ten.

Sicheng takes his wallet from him and slides out the key-fob card for him. "Kun, please," he presses and Kun realises that Ten must have sounded so sad on the phone that Yuta and Sicheng have been worrying. Worrying to the extent that Sicheng has left work early to turn up on his doorstep. His heart sinks even further.

"I thought it would help, so I tried to talk to him, I tried, but he didn't want to listen and he..." Kun can feel a now-familiar wave of guilt engulfing him. "He just kissed me out of the blue and I'm so gone for him, Sicheng. I'm so fucking irresponsible."

Until now, Kun's blocked out everything that came before that kiss: how desperate he'd felt and how much frustration—with themselves and with each other— had filled the air. But the truth is that Kun knew that sleeping with Ten wouldn't make anything better, but he'd let Ten initiate it anyway. And when Ten had come underneath him, skin flushed, trembling and perfect, Kun had wanted the moment to last forever. But it couldn't. Of course it couldn't. He’d known that as soon as he’d woken up, alone. 

Sicheng follows him inside of his apartment building. "So I take it you slept together?"

Kun sighs. “I didn’t invite you in.”

“We’re family, I don’t require an invite.” Sicheng stays close behind him, “I haven’t been here in forever, anyway, I need to see if you’ve done anything new with this place.”

“It just looks the same as it always has,” Kun says. He’s being petulant and he knows it. Kun’s shirt is stuck to his back with sweat as they get to his front door and it’s not even that hot out. “Although… I do have a new coffee machine in the kitchen, it’s meant to be the best for espresso so I splashed out a few months ago.”

“Wonderful." Sicheng smiles at him. "You can show me how it works while we talk.”

Teeth gritted, Kun tugs loose his tie. He says, “You’re lucky I love you.”

“I am." Sicheng's expression softens. "So is Ten,” he adds. “And yes, that’s a cue to tell me why you’re being… Like this.”

Kun closes his eyes. He doesn’t know for certain what Sicheng means by this vague description, but he guesses it’s not meant to be a good thing. Not that he cares; his heart is heavy and he’s so _confused_ and what other people think has never mattered to him. 

“I can’t—I can’t talk about it right now.” He heads into the kitchen. “I can’t stand feeling so useless, but I do. I just want him to be happy.”

“I know." Sicheng leans against the counter and pokes at the succulent Ten picked out when they’d visited the flower market after brunch one weekend a while back. “We all do. He’ll get there, he’ll be okay. So will you. These things tend to work out.”

“Do you really think so?”

Sicheng shrugs. “I mean, I hope so. I’m just making this up as I go along, but I’m sure it’s all true.”

“That gives me no confidence,” Kun says, but it makes him laugh all the same, the tension cut with Sicheng’s honesty. “But I hope so too.” 

Over coffee, they talk about work, about Sicheng's mom and how Yuta thinks he's going to be invited to a Dong family dinner one day. "In his dreams," Sicheng says with feigned contempt, but Kun can imagine it happening, in a year or two's time maybe. Sicheng doesn’t make time for people he isn’t actually interested in, they both know that, Kun talks about the project he has on at work, and he talks about the new band he’s been listening to on his commute to the office. Sicheng tells him about parties coming up that he may or may not attend. Explains, “There’s a new Chef's Table season on Netflix. That could keep me busy for a couple of weekends.”

Kun laughs and rolls his eyes.  

Before his cousin leaves, he lingers in the doorway. “You know, you were wrong about this place,” he says.  “Maybe you don’t see it, but it’s completely different to when you moved in. It’s lived in now. And Ten... Ten's all over it.” 

He picks up the lavender candle that Ten used to burn every Saturday afternoon as they curled up on the sofa and watched mindless television, nursing hangovers and picking at croissants. Ten would tut at the tiny flakes of buttery pastry that would crumble off and onto the floor, and Kun would say, “We’ll tidy it up later,” but Ten would always appear with a dustpan and brush & crawl under the coffee table to get to the crumbs. 

“What can I say?” Kun shrugs. He knows Sicheng is right; Ten exists in every room, Ten has brought joy and chaos into the once clerical space. He’s brought _love_. “He makes a lasting impression.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sicheng forgoes the new season of Chef’s Table the next weekend and he and Yuta ride a taxi with Kun over to a bar in the basement of an old cannery on the East side of the city. It’s dark and damp, and the music is experimental, and a beer costs double the price of most places, even round here, so Kun kind of hates it, but then he’s never been enamoured with any of the places Ten and his friends usually frequent. 

These bars and clubs always seem to be trying to compensate for something lost. Maybe they're just trying to compensate for the people that inhabit them, he thinks. They’re lost in their own ways—him and Ten, and the rest of them. That’s the point of this scene at its core: somewhere to hide and to be seen at the same time.

“The music here is terrible,” Yuta notes as he passes Kun a beer. “But I kind of love it. It’s a flaw, but not a fatal one. The more we drink, the better the music becomes. It’s actually a pretty genius way to make money.” 

“I’d never thought of it that way,” Kun admits. 

“I think Ten’s been involved in the promotions side of things for this place.” Yuta glances sideways at him. Kun feels like he’s being very politely ambushed, and Yuta doesn’t usually do polite. “Speaking of Ten, have you spoken to him this week?”

Kun nods. “I’ve messaged him a few times. Checking he’s okay and stuff. I told him I was coming out tonight.” 

“He didn’t message you back?”

“Oh, no he did.” Kun realises his overly expensive beer is now almost finished. “He’s… He’s acting like everything is normal.”

“He’s good at that, on the surface. We all are.” Yuta glances at Kun’s near-empty drink. “Want another beer?”

“Why not?” Kun says, but he can think of a few good reasons not to get drunk tonight. 

Ten arrives not long after this, looking like the epitome of a Saturday night. He looks like he could move heaven and earth with a single smile, and maybe he could. His eyes are framed by golden liner, which shimmers as he moves through the room, but when he sees Kun he hesitates, pauses as though time has frozen him in place. The black of his pupils look like a mirror. Kun doesn’t see himself in them, though. He just sees pain. 

Ten regains his composure—elegance has always come easy to him, Kun thinks—and approaches Kun. He holds out the bottle he’s holding, one he’s somehow got passed the doorman and into the bar. “It’s tequila,” he says. “Want some?” 

“No thanks. I’m spending my life savings on bottles of whatever this weak stuff is.” Kun tries dry humour, but it comes out sounding sad.

“We can’t have that.” Ten tuts. He picks up a glass from the bar and pours in his own drink straight from the bottle. “Here, please take it, it’s a peace offering. An apology.”

Kun takes it. "For what?" He can feel his heartbeat in his chest. 

“I wanted to be there in the morning,” Ten says. He can barely look at Kun, and it hurts Kun so much to see him hurting. “I really wanted to.”

Kun takes a drink. It burns the back of his throat; he’s never been much fond of tequila. “You did?”

Ten fiddles with the bracelet on his left wrist.  “I’ve always wanted to. I’ve always wondered if we…” He trails off and smiles, then. It isn’t a happy smile, but he’s still the most beautiful person Kun has ever known. Always. “But I don’t get to have it. I don’t deserve it, you know?”

“Ten.” Kun reaches out between them. Ten is right there, but it feels like reaching through water. He brushes a hand over Ten’s wrist. “Baby…”

_Baby_ . He’s never allowed himself to call Ten that before, no matter how many times he’s wanted to, no matter how much he’s ached—physically _ached—_ to be able to whisper that into Ten’s ear when he’s been curled up against his side, his lavender candle burning, his jacket hanging on the back of Kun’s bedroom door.

Ten closes his eyes. He lets Kun hold his hand for the briefest of seconds. “I can’t be who I want to be for you, Kun. I can only be myself.”

Kun can’t understand, he’s trying so hard, but it’s so difficult to fathom how Ten can think he’d need to _change_ for anyone. Ten who shines so bright, who brings love into every space. Ten who he loves, who he’s loved for such a long time. “I’ve never wanted you to be anyone else,” Kun tells him. He puts the glass back down on the bar, takes the bottle from Ten’s grip and puts that down too and takes his other hand too. “Look at me, please.”

“I’m a black hole,” Ten says. It's like he's looking through him. “I can’t offer you anything, and you deserve it all.”

He presses a soft kiss to the corner of Kun’s mouth. Kun can sense Sicheng is probably watching them from the other end of the bar. He wants to cry. 

“You shouldn’t have let me sleep on your shoulder,” Ten whispers. His voice wobbles. “You shouldn’t have been so kind to me. I’ve never deserved it,” he says. His breath is warm against Kun's skin.

Time stops for them, then, painful and cruel as time is, but then Ten lets go of his hands and composes himself, chin up, mask back on. 

“Tell your cousin I’m okay, he needs to stop worrying about me and start worrying about the high possibility that Yuta is already planning their future wedding in his head.” He leans around Kun and waves in their direction. His voice is airy, his smile is drawn on. “Oh, they’re cute.” 

It hadn't been obvious, at first, that Ten saw good in all of them except himself, but it is now. 

“You deserve love too,” Kun says, his chest feels so tight. 

Ten pretends not to hear him. He smiles and winks and dances away through the crowds of souls just trying to forget, and then he’s out of sight, again.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> ilu all, take care  
> ([twitter](https://twitter.com/lilacsui) [CC](https://curiouscat.me/rainingover))


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